


Second chances and fought for families

by normalisoverrated



Series: Second Chances and Families [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Dad!Coulson, F/M, Family, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt Skye | Daisy Johnson, Natasha Romanov Feels, Natasha Romanov Has Issues, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug, Parent Melinda May, Parent Natasha Romanov, Parent Phil Coulson, Past Child Abuse, Protective Melinda May, Protective Natasha Romanov, Protective Phil Coulson, Skye | Daisy Johnson Feels, Skye | Daisy Johnson Needs a Hug, Strike Team Delta, Team as Family, foundFamily, lots of fluff, mom!May, mom!Natasha Romanov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-07-09 20:17:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 96,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19893745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/normalisoverrated/pseuds/normalisoverrated
Summary: 26 years ago Natalia Romanova gave birth to a miracle baby and left the child with her father in a remote village in Hunan province, China -- Safe, protected.21 years ago Natasha Romanov finally risks returning, only to find a ghost village and a ransacked house and tales of murderers.21 years ago Natasha Romanov gave her daughter up for dead and mourned her with vodka and suicide missions that made her partner scream himself hoarse.So what happens when Strike Team Delta hunts down the new SHIELD base on rumours that Phil Coulson is still alive? What happens when her daughter turns out to be alive and Natasha's world turns itself upside down all over again?Daisy has spent most of her life searching for her parents. But, still healing from her birth father Jia Ying trying to kill her and finally starting to feel safe with her SHIELD family, she isn't sure she can  or wants to open herself up to anyone else, let alone a spy known for disappearing acts and running from her feelings.Finding each other could destroy them both - or it could finally be what gives them true healing.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, this is my first time writing these characters or in this fandom, so I'm not sure I've gotten their voices quite right. Its a lot more fluffy than the summary suggests though because I'm a sucker for fluff. This is my 'life sucks rn so I'm gonna write fluff in someone elses' story and I'm actually really enjoying this. I'm not very good at close proof-reads though, so please ignore any interesting grammar, weird tenses and POV shifts. This should however update pretty regularly (at least weekly probably more). 
> 
> Hope you enjoy it though and tell me what you think!!!

Coulson and May would later conclude that everything was so quiet that something had to have been brewing. To be perfectly honest, the two seasoned agents had enough instinct even before it happened to know that _something_ was about to go down. To know to make sure the base had some extra supplies, and everyone got just that bit more sleep that would extend how long they could last in a crisis. When the _something_ happened however, it was so beyond anything that either agents could have begun to predict that they may as well have seen nothing at all coming. 

It started mid-afternoon, when the Playground perimeter alarms sounded, alerting the base to an intruder. Or more accurately, to the disabling of a sensor at the perimeter. By the time they actually found the two intruders, they were inside the base. It was also unfortunately Coulson and May who found them, leading to May biting off a Chinese curse word and Coulson letting several fly. The Black Widow and Hawkeye just glared at the pair.

“It’s true then.” Natasha Romanoff said bluntly, while her partner just glared. 

“I’ll tell Daisy to switch off the alarms.” May said, and walked off, shooting a look at Coulson as she passed. 

Coulson sighed, he knew May more than well enough to translate that non-expression as ‘You should have listened to me’. At least it wasn’t ‘I told you so.’

“Why don’t you come to my office” He offered the spies. 

Clint gave him a glare that couldn’t quite hide the hurt on his face, and Natasha just inclined her head, face blanker than May’s. Coulson resisted the urge to sigh. This was going to be interesting.

The Playground was eerily empty as he led the way to his office, most of the agents all still involved in the search. Bobbi and Hunter gave them startled expressions as they passed, but must have seen May already because they didn’t stop. All too soon the door was closing with a sharp click behind the trio, and Phil turned to face the two agents he had once almost been a father-figure to. Neither spoke. Coulson hadn’t seen Natasha this blank since they brought her in, almost twenty years ago now.

“There was good reason not to tell you.” He said. Natasha snorted scornfully but didn’t speak. Clint’s glare tried to burn a hole through a spot in the wall about two inches left of Phil’s face.

“You let us believe you died” Clint snarled.

“I did die.” Coulson said. 

Natasha’s eyes flashed. “You’re looking very healthy for a dead man”

“Fury sent me to a project called T.A.H.I.T.I. They brought me back to life.”

“When?” Clint asked, and Coulson could hear the plea in the archer’s voice. The plea to say it was only a couple of weeks ago, that they had been about to read Strike Team Delta in.

“Two years ago.” Phil said.

“Then _**WHY**_ ” Clint exploded, the sudden shout echoing around Coulson’s office.

“Because we weren’t sure he would stay alive.” May’s cool voice stated from behind him, and Coulson tried not to jump, tried not to let on that he’d had no idea his second was back. 

The anger drained from Clint’s face, and his panicked eyes swept Coulson up and down. “Are you saying you could still die?”

Coulson shook his head hastily, and with a sigh, began to read the spies in on T.A.H.I.T.I. and the effects it had had on those who had previously been put through it, and how they had dealt with that by finding the hidden city. He skimmed through the details on Daisy, saying only that one of their agents had their genetics changed down in the city, and explaining even more briefly about the inhumans and the fight their leaders had started and lost.

“So you could have told us two months ago” Natasha stated when he was done, her voice biting. 

“I was waiting for a good time” Coulson said weakly.

Natasha opened her mouth to say what would doubtlessly have been something bitingly sarcastic when the assassin froze, every muscle in her body stilling in a split-second even as the colour drained like water from her face. Coulson was spinning, adrenaline shooting through his body before he could even properly process that if the Black Widow was that scared of a threat, there was nothing he was going to be able to do about it.

Except there was no threat behind him, only Daisy, who offered him a cheerful grin and “Fitz, Mack and I have fixed the perimeter alarms, and rigged them to be a decent bit harder to take down next time. Oh, and I’ve delayed Koenig from insisting on lanyards...” her voice trailed off as she felt the atmosphere in the room. “Is everything ok? May said to report once we’d secured the base?” She looked round the room again, taking in the way Coulson, May and Hawkeye (and Daisy was so proud of her self control not to be squealing just then) were looking at the red-haired woman in confusion, and then her gaze froze on the red-head herself, caught in the way the woman was looking at her as though she’d seen a ghost.

“ _Pauchok?_ ” Natasha chocked, the word barely a whisper as her body moved forwards without her conscious direction, reaching for the brown-haired agent. 

Daisy took a rapid step back, eyes flickering confusedly over the woman “Uh, I don’t think we’ve met” she said.

“ _My Pauchok?”_ Natasha repeated, disbelief pouring through the woman’s voice and she reached for the retreating agent. 

“I’m not, whoever you think you’re recognising right now, I’m not them” Daisy said nervously, retreating towards the door. “Look, can you stop looking at me like that, you’re creeping me out. Black Widow? Widow?”

Her foot hit something solid behind her, and she knew she’d reached the wall, and groped for the door handle, eyes looking to her SO for instruction. May’s face was blank, but her eyes were confused, and she jerked her chin towards the door in silent command. Daisy yanked it open and ran.

Behind her, Natasha’s slow moving limbs suddenly remembered they belonged to a highly trained spy, and she lunged forwards, “ _ Pauchok,  _ _**no** _ !” 

She lunged towards the door, forgetting everything but the girl, the girl who looked unbelievably like, like...hands closed sudden and hard around her arms, arresting her flight, and she spun, already lashing out at her attacker, but Clint just ducked under the blow and swept her feet from under her.

The blow would never have worked on any other day, but the sight of those brown eyes had almost undone Natasha and she hit the floor hard. Behind her, May shut the door and Coulson hit a switch to lock down the office. “No” Natasha protested, jumping up and reaching for the door as metal walls started coming down from the ceiling, only to find Melinda May with a gun pointed unerringly between her eyes. Natasha’s eyes narrowed.

“Get out of my way” she said, voice low and full of violent promise. 

“You need to calm down” May said.

“Nat?” questioned Clint behind her, and in the shortened name the spy heard the promise, I have your back, and the question, what the hell? Natasha ignored both.

“Where did she come from?” she asked, and no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t hide the tremble in her voice. 

“Downstairs” Coulson said, his voice urging her to calm down “she’s an agent. She’s not a threat.”

“I know that!” Natasha snapped, her thin hold on control cracking again “Where did she come from??”

And somehow, mercifully, Coulson seemed to understand, because he said, voice careful “An orphanage in the US, St Agnes.”

“And before that?” 

“Somewhere else” Coulson said, voice guarded, and Natasha turned away from the door to face him, meeting her former handler’s eyes, seeing the protectiveness there. Natasha swallowed, her mouth too-dry, and let Coulson see the storm that had exploded in her head the instant she’d seen that face. 

“Please Coulson. P _lease_ ” and Natasha would never admit that her voice had cracked on the last word. 

Coulson looked at her for what felt like an eternity, before he nodded, just slightly. “China, a village in Hunan province.” he said, and Natasha’s legs turned to water.

Clint’s eyes flew wide, head snapping around to look at hers in sudden realisation. “That’s the village isn’t it? From all those years ago? Wait,  _ shit _ , that was the girl? The girl from the photograph?”

Natasha tried to speak, tried to say yes but her throat felt unbelievably tight, Coulson’s words echoing in her head. The implication, the meaning... Her Pauchok...

“Nat? Clint? Is one of you going to explain this? Coulson asked, his voice tense, and May only lowered the gun slightly, her eyes trained on both highly trained agents. Nat tried to speak again, but only a strangled sound came out of her mouth, and then Clint was in front of her, guiding her into a seat, murmuring about shock and fussing and she was taking shaky, gasping breaths, only then realising that she’d stopped taking them. 

The room came back into focus slowly, and Natasha forced her limbs to stop shaking. Forced her hand to reach out and take the cup of coffee May handed her as a new reality settled in her mind. A new truth. Not absorbed yet, not anything like absorbed yet, but settled in some way.

“Clint?” May demanded, and the archer shrugged.

“I don’t really know. We took a quinjet to a village in Hunan once, within a couple of months of Nat finally being allowed off on her own. We found it completely destroyed, later found that a Shield team went after an 084 there. But the whole place was deserted. Everyone dead. Nat went running into this house, and when she came out she was, well, I’ve never seen her like that. She had a photo from inside the house, and she put in in her purse. That’s it.”

That wasn’t it, and she felt a rush of gratitude to her partner for skipping out the part where she’d screamed inside the house. For skipping the part where she’d drunk so much neat vodka she’d puked three times and kept drinking until Clint had handcuffed her to the bed, and the parts where he’d kept recuffing her until she stopped escaping and just sobbed and sobbed.

“Are you saying Natasha knew Skye, Daisy I mean?”

Clint shrugged.

“Could she have been to the village before? As far as I know Daisy never left the village before Hydra. She wasn’t even born in a hospital.”

“No” Natasha said, her voice quiet but there, “she was born in the back room of a safe-house in Italy. There was a dead body in the next room and I cut the cord with a dagger and there was so much blood but she was ok. She was healthy and she was so beautiful and I swore I’d protect her, my little Pauchok.” 

“Pauchok?” Coulson asked.

“Little spider” May translated, eyeing her, and then, “What happened to the mother Nat?”

Nat gave a slightly hysterical sounding laugh, and Clint reeled back in shock, putting the pieces together in an instant. Clint always had been able to read her better than anyone else.

“She’s yours.” He said, and it wasn’t a question but Nat nodded anyway. Coulson and May gaped at her, but it was Clint whose hand tightened on her shoulder “And you thought she was dead when we went to the village.” Natasha nodded again. 

“I don’t understand” she whispered “The shield report said no-one survived”

“That’s because the second shield team made sure she disappeared, so that whoever was after her wouldn’t find her. They took her to America, and left her at an orphanage, they kept her safe.” Coulson said, his voice betraying his own shock. 

Natasha nodded, but it didn’t really matter. She was alive. Her Pauchok was alive, did it matter how it had happened? She was  _ alive _ ! “I want to see her.” she said.

May and Coulson visibly hesitated, and Clint bristled in her defence. “She’s her mother!”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea” Coulson said “You freaked her out a little earlier.”

May was blunter “You can’t just go up to her and say you’re her Mum. You can’t just drop that on her.”

“You can’t keep her from...” Clint started, but Nat interrupted. 

“They’re right, I can’t just, just. It’s not fair to her. I, I’ll wait. You can go talk to her first. I need to calm down properly first anyway.”

May looked at her, and nodded once before turning to head to the door. She keyed in the code that undid the lock-down, and went to find her rookie.

\---------------

Daisy stared at the door of her bunk, unsure if she wanted to cry, puke, laugh or run. _Fuck_. May had left mere seconds before, gone to tell the redhead who had been gawping at her earlier that she’d (albeit shakily) agreed to see her. The redhead who was Black Widow. And her Mother. 

Six months ago, before the obelisk and the city and powers, before meeting her insane step-mother and psychopath father, she would have been delighted by the news. Before her step-mother turned out to be an unstable lunatic with the propensity to go on sudden killing sprees. Before her father tried to drain her life because she wouldn’t support his plan of world domination.

Two years ago, when she’d been living out of a van, always searching for opportunities to shower and watching over her meagre store of money, she’d have been over the moon. Before SHIELD, before Coulson and May and Fitzsimmons. Before the bus had become some strange sort of home, before DC and her SO had become  _something_ to her. Something that made this more than a job, something that was never said, never specified, but always secure. 

Two years ago she’d have clung to the idea of having found her mother, her blood, like the only lifeline in the universe.

Two years ago she hadn’t met her blood father or adoptive mother and felt the ice of betrayal tear through her heart, deeper and worse even than what Ward had done.

Now, now she didn’t know. How many families had she been through? How many ‘parents’ had screwed her over? Even her own parents, those who’d professed to love her had let her down, and torn her heart out as they did so. What was to say her blood mother would be any better than her blood father? Daisy wasn’t sure she wanted another parent. She’d tried to let go of the idea over the last two months, since the Ilyad. To accept that her lifelong search had led to a step-mother too unstable to really care for her, and a father who didn’t really care at all. To start really becoming happy about the  _something_ that Coulson and May were to her. She didn’t know what this new development meant for that  _something_ . And the fact that her birth mother was an Avenger? Was the Black Widow? Daisy didn’t even know where to start with that.

A knock on the door snapped her out of her thinking, and her stomach knotted up with the thought of who it had to be.

“C-come in”

The door opened slowly, and then Natasha Romanoff slipped into her bunk, her face blank but her eyes lost and shaky.

“Hi” the Black Widow said.

“H-Hi” Daisy replied, and silence fell, awkward and frightened. 

“I’m sorry I scared you upstairs.” Natasha said, trying to pretend she wasn’t still floundering, pretend she had no idea what to say to the daughter she’d thought dead for almost twenty years. 

“I wasn’t scared” Daisy said automatically, bristling, and Natasha felt her lips twitch a little at the gesture. 

“Well, I’m sorry anyway, I shouldn’t have reacted like that.”

Daisy shrugged awkwardly “Yeah, well, I’m guessing you thought I was dead. Probably a bit of a shock. I look a lot like my Dad.” She couldn’t stop her voice twisting in bitterness at the last word. Natasha’s eyes flicked up in silent question, but Daisy didn’t reply and silence fell again.

“So umm,” Daisy said, just as Natasha blurted “I’m sorry”.

“What?” they both said, then froze, as if the situation could have gotten awkwarder. 

“You first” Daisy said, and Natasha reached up a hand to run her fingers helplessly through her red curls. 

“I’m sorry I’m not the Mom you wanted. I’m sorry I don’t know what I’m doing. I thought I could do anything, be anything, but you’re not, you’re not a mark, and I don’t know what to _do_ ”

Daisy blinked, and then somehow, miraculously, seemed to relax a little, her rigid posture slackening as she slouched a little on the bed. “Good to know I’m not your target.” she joked “I’m pretty sure I can’t take the Black Widow.”

“You might be surprised” Natasha said “It turns out a big enough shock and a basic leg sweep will land me on my ass.” 

Daisy’s face broke into a laugh, and Natasha for a moment felt like her chest would cave in. That was her Pauchok sitting on the bed. Laughing.  _Alive_ . 

“You’re not doing that badly you know.”

“What?” Nat asked

“At the Mom thing. I mean, my Dad tried to kill me so in comparison...” Daisy trailed off, her tone heavy with implication, but the redhead seemed to miss it completely as she zoned in the first part of that sentence.

“He tried to _**what**_????”

“Uhhhhh” Daisy said, realising properly - as the woman in front of her transformed from nervously leaning against the door to balanced on the balls of her feet looking ready to kill someone with her bare hands – just who it was standing in her bunk and the implication of this. 

“Where is he?” Natasha demanded, a super-agent demanding intel. 

“He’s dead.” Daisy said hastily. “My step-mom killed him.”

Natasha blinked, very slowly relaxing her posture from fight-ready to something vaguely calmer. Her voice sounded more controlled than it felt as she asked “What happened?”

“Didn’t, didn’t Coulson or someone tell you about Afterlife?”

“The inhuman’s place?”

“Yeah”

“I think he left a few bits out”

“oh, what did he say about it?”

“One of your agents got taken down to this weird city, got powers, and got taken to Afterlife, and the inhuman leader used it as a spark to try to start a war with SHIELD, ending in a fight on an old SHIELD boat, the Ilyiad?”

Daisy paused “I think he left more than a few bits out” she said.

Natasha narrowed her eyes, sensing that those bits had to do with her Pauchok. “What’s the whole story?”

Daisy looked at Natasha for a moment, trying to work out where to start, remembering the whole miserable story all over again. Eventually her shoulders slumped “I don’t really want to talk about it. Maybe another time?”

“Of course” Natasha said, aching to reach for the woman on the bed, to pull her into a hug. “Whenever you’re ready. Or never, if you like.” It wasn’t like Natasha couldn’t find out what happened on her own. She was an international super-spy for goodness sake. Not to mention an Avenger. 

Her Pauchok gave a wan little smile that made her heart twist in aching pain. “Thanks” Then she shifted slightly, moving up on the bed to make more space, the invitation clear.

Natasha moved closer, feeling a smile tug at the corners of her mouth, and sank onto the bed next to her daughter, turned slightly so she could still face her, some instinct in her gut unwilling to let the girl out of her sight, terrified that she would vanish into nothing.

“Can I ask you something?” Daisy asked. 

“Of course, anything” Natasha replied, before immediately regretting it, there were many, _many_ things she didn’t want to talk about with her daughter. The vast majority of her past for instance. 

“Umm, how did, how did this happen? I mean, Dad, before he turned out to be nuts, said he only met you twice? How was I, well, ummm how did I end up in Hunan?”

Natasha took a shaky breath. She should have expected Daisy to ask about that. It wasn’t a nice story though, and her gut twisted at the thought of telling her Pauchok how she’d come to be. But the question was fair, and Nat knew she owed Daisy at least an honest answer, no matter how bad it made her look.

“Jia Ying and I, we were never, ummm, we were never in love.” She admitted awkwardly “I never even liked your Dad. The KGB had intel, rumours mostly, about people with strange abilities. I was sent to investigate.”

“He was a mark” Daisy said bluntly, and Natasha nodded, trying desperately to pretend this was just some sort of debrief. 

“I did as I was trained, seduced him, slept with him, tried to get him to reveal his secrets, but I couldn’t get anything from him. After a couple of days I was pulled out for another mission. I didn’t realise I was pregnant until three months later. It, it wasn’t supposed to be possible. I was, the red-room, that’s where I was trained, they uhhh, they” Natasha felt like something was blurring her head, messing up her usually confident words. Like a rug had been yanked from under her the moment Daisy walked into the office, and she was still reeling. 

“I know” Daisy interrupted, “the red-room sterilise their graduates.”

“Right” Nat said, pushing the question of how Daisy knew from her mind for the moment “and I had graduated, so it wasn’t supposed to be possible, I still don’t know how”

“I think I might” Daisy said an edge of bitterness to her voice “Dad’s power drains life from others. It probably did some weird reverse thing when he had, uhh, actually, I don’t want to think about that.”

Nat chuckled, the rich sound filling the room before she sobered “Jia Ying was inhuman? I guess the rumours were true.” she wondered nervously if it could be passed down, if her Pauchok would develop powers.

“Yeah. Anyway, you were talking about realising you were pregnant?” Daisy said, deflecting the conversation quickly away from her father and the inhumans. The spy had to have noticed the deflection, but she nodded and continued the story anyway.

“When I realised I was pregnant I freaked. I was, I wasn’t in a good place then. I was only a year out of the red-room, and my ledger was already dripping red, but the brainwashing was still strong. And a kid, I knew what they’d do with a kid of mine. I-I panicked, manipulated myself into the longest running mission I could find, taking down an international ring of people buying and selling intel. They’d sold intel from the KGB, and higher-ups wanted them gone. I was given ten months to track down and kill them all. Ten months on my own. I made sure no-one followed me when I left, went from country to country gathering intel to make sure of it. By the time I was showing, I was as much in the wind as I could be while still fulfilling my mission.”

“Why fulfil the mission?” Daisy asked, and Nat wanted to snap at her, to lash out at the question, but instead she forced herself to answer. 

“Because I was weak, and I was brainwashed to serve my country, the thought of leaving didn’t enter my mind, the brainwashing was too recent, too strong. All I wanted was something different for my kid. Anyway, if I’d run they’d have hunted me down to the end of the earth. It wasn’t like when Clint turned me, there wasn’t anywhere to go, no other organisation to join, no other options.”

“Oh” said Daisy “I’m sorry.”

Natasha wasn’t sure whether she was apologising for asking, or that it happened or for something else entirely, but she didn’t ask. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.

“You were born six months into the mission. I’d stolen and read a book for trainee-midwives. I didn’t dare go to a hospital. You were born in the back room of a safe house. One of the ring tracked me there when labour was just starting, so there was a dead body in the other room when you were born. I cut the cord with a knife and there was blood everywhere. Looking back it’s a miracle you were born alive, never mind healthy. But you were. All wrinkly skin and baby-blue eyes and you were _beautiful_. It was the first time in my life I realised I could still love someone.” Natasha’s voice shook with emotion as she remembered. Remembered those precious few months she’d had with her baby-girl. But then she remembered what else happened during those months and anger tinged her voice. 

“I took you on missions with me. Left you at nurseries or even empty rooms when I went to deal with a mark. I was so weak. So lost in my head, in the red-room’s orders. You could have died so many times. But I couldn’t bear to leave you behind. You were everything light to me. Everything good. I was compromised beyond anything I’d ever known and I knew it, but I didn’t care. I was selfish and compromised and it almost killed you. I was careless one night, found a place to sleep for the night and didn’t bother scouting around. Some scout told my latest mark a strange woman matching the Black Widow’s description had come into town. He came after me with a three mates and enough guns to equip six. You were strapped to my front when they attacked, and a bullet grazed my upper arm. An inch to the right and it would have gone through her head. I killed every last member of the ring in that town and left before the sun rose. Took her to Hunan, told her father and his new wife she was his, and left in the night. It, it was the hardest thing I ever did, but she, she was meant to be _safe_ , I thought she was safe. I-I failed. I failed her, I failed _you. I-I_ ”

“Hey, I’m right here” Daisy interjected, “I’m fine. I’m safe.”

Natasha looked up from the floor to find her daughter's blurry face looking straight at her. Startled, she reached a hand up to swipe at her eyes, humiliated to realise she was crying. Daisy was still speaking, her voice soothing.

“It’s ok, I’m ok. It wasn’t your fault. They loved me, I know they did. If it wasn’t for Hydra I’d have grown up adored and totally safe. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Hydra?” Natasha questioned sharply and Daisy froze like a deer in headlights. 

“Umm, another day?” she said. 

Nat desperately wanted to push it, wanted to know, but she nodded, unwilling to push the shaky trust that was building. However she was absolutely grabbing Phil later and demanding the  _ full _ story of what the  _ hell _ had happened. 

“Ok” she agreed and then “I’m sorry. I’m so _sorry_. I should have protected you, I should have, I there must have been a better way, I should never have left you. I love you Pauchok. Please believe me, I never wanted to leave you, I-I” Her words were cut off by sudden warmth as arms wrapped around her, and she almost flipped Daisy before she realised she was being hugged. Without thought she wrapped her arms around her daughter, pulling her close and cradling her, holding her tight in her arms, breathing in the scent of her, the solid, real, _living_ weight of her daughter. 

Daisy for her part was reeling, reeling somehow even more than when her SO had told her in blunt words that Natasha Romanoff was her mother. Reeling from the story she’d been told, and reeling more from the way it had been told; wracked with grief and pain and regret. Reeling from three little words spoken with a depth of sincerity her dad hadn’t even touched. And maybe, maybe this was going to be ok. Maybe this could be a good thing after-all. She registered dimly that Natasha had pulled her into her lap and was holding her as if she might never let go. She wondered for an instant how strong the woman was, to have lifted her so easily, then she forgot it in favour of trying to somehow snuggle deeper into the hug. 

A knock at the door made her leap a mile, and Bobbi’s voice filtered through “Supper’s in five Daisy, we’re still having a team meal tonight, although May’s said our guests are coming too if you want to squeal over the Avengers like Fitzsimmons are looking like they might.”

Daisy swallowed hard, they called out in a voice that she hoped sounded normal “Got it, I’ll be out in three.”

Bobbi’s steps moved away from the door, and Daisy slowly, reluctantly pulled out of the embrace, scrubbing a sleeve across her face to clear the dampness from her eyes.

“I guess the rest of your team don’t know then” Natasha said, her voice unreadable.

“May wouldn’t say anything” Daisy said confidently “she’d leave the decision to me. Coulson too.”

Natasha nodded “Then I will too, it’s your choice when or if to tell your team.” Goodness knows she has no idea how or if she’s going to tell the rest of the Avengers.

Daisy nodded “Thanks.” she turned to the door, but then hesitated and turned back “If, uh, if you still want me, maybe, maybe we could get to know each other?”

Natasha felt like her throat was clogged with cement. She wanted to burst out that  _ of course _ she wanted her, how could she ever think anybody wouldn’t, but all she could choke out was “Thank you”. 

By the look on Daisy’s face she got the message. She nodded shakily and left the room quickly, and Natasha forcibly gathered herself and went after her, pulling up a blank mask as she did.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Natasha and Clint get to sit in on a team meeting and Natasha decides that Coulson owes her a few answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm taking some bits form AoS season 3, but leaving most bits (there will be no Hive or Lash) and you'll notice I've referred to some new inhuman characters. There will be some mission stuff going on in this fic but only really the ones that affect Daisy or Natasha. 
> 
> Oh, and I'm not a scientist and haven't studied it in years so just go ahead and assume that anything vaguely scientific in this fic is complete and utter nonsense.

She dropped behind after a few steps to avoid making it obvious they were arriving together, and heard Clint fall into step behind her.

“You alright?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” 

She felt more than saw the ‘really Nat?’ look Clint tossed her, and shrugged. “I’ve been worse” she amended.

Clint, who knew her better than anyone else in the world, including both Coulson and Fury, nodded, accepting this. 

“Anything you need” he said

“I know” Nat said, turning to look at him properly. She felt something loosen slightly in her gut just at the sight of him, dressed in tac gear and looking like this was just another day, just another mission. Whatever happened, no matter what, she’d still have Clint. 

Then his face broke into a smirk and he said “Now I get to return the favour and tell my niece embarrassing stories about...”

The end of the sentence was lost as Natasha returned the favour from earlier and swept his legs out from under him, favouring him with her best ‘I can kill you in seventeen different ways with my pinky finger’ smile. Clint just smirked back at her, springing up from the floor as Coulson’s voice floated down the hall towards them.

“If you teach my agents to attack each other in the hallways I’ll tell those stories myself, about _both_ of you.”

They both turned to see Coulson’s mock-stern face and offered him unrepentant grins, and Coulson sighed and shook his head at them. He led them the rest of the way to what turned out to be four tables shoved together into a square in the break room, most of the chairs already full. Nat’s eyes immediately found her Pauchok, seated next to two young looking agents bent over some sort of diagram and already deep in conversation. Next to her, round the corner of the table, the blond-haired agent was in a heated discussion with the dark haired man they’d seen her with earlier, with a large black man who looked like he could bench-press a car on her other-side, engaged in conversation with May, around another corner of the table. 

Coulson dropped into the seat around the corner to the young agents, robbing Nat of the ability to get that much closer to Daisy. She wondered fleetingly if it was on purpose, but there was little she could do about it if it was, so she just dropped into a sea next to May, getting as close as she can to opposite her if nothing else, Clint sitting loyally next to her.

The buzz of conversation in the room fell slowly quiet as half the agents in the room pretended they weren’t sneaking glances at the two Avengers and Coulson spoke up, voice tinged with amusement.

“Well, I’m pretty sure everyone knows who our guests are, but for the benefit of manners, this is Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton, they are welcome on our base as long as they don’t break anymore of our equipment,” this with a quick stern look at both of them that made Nat want to laugh “please show them where things are if they ask and I warn you that if anyone pranks them they deserve what they get.” 

Laughs ran around the table, although Nat didn’t miss the quick smirks that flickered over Daisy and her friends faces at the mention of pranks.

“Nat, Clint, this is our core team. May you already know, Daisy you met in the office; the blond next to her is Bobbi, field agent and scientist, then Hunter and Mack, both field agents, and on her other side are FitzSimmons, our head scientists.” The various agents nodded or smiled when their names were mentioned, although the two scientists barely looked up from the diagram they and Daisy had been bent over. 

“FitzSimmons?” Clint asked, questioning, and the two scientists gestured to each other without even properly looking up. 

“Fitz” the woman said

“Simmons” the man finished. 

“Put that away you two, you can go back to it later.” May ordered

The scientists and Daisy pouted, but Fitz rolled up the diagram and tipped his chair back precariously, Simmons and Daisy reaching hands out to grab the edge without even looking, to put it on a table behind him.

“So, can we eat now or are we gonna keep starin’ at the food like it’s gone out of fashion?” Hunter asked, his accent identifying him as British and his attitude identifying him as the Tony personality of the team. Bobbi hit him round the back of the head, but stood up and started serving the pasta in the centre of the table into bowls, passing them over to Mack who’d grabbed the sauce. It was a simple meal, but it smelled heavenly when a bowl was passed to Nat, followed quickly by several different bowls of cheese, sour cream and garlic bread. Coulson started what seemed to be a regular casual meeting as soon as everyone had food and Nat settled into the background to listen and learn, watching her Pauchok out of the corner of her eye. 

“Alright, who wants to feedback first? May? Daisy?” 

A quick glance between the two aforementioned agents and Pauchok gestured with a piece of garlic bread at the superior agent.

“Ward’s still in the wind” was all the poker-faced woman said. 

“You make it sound like we’ve made no progress” protested Hunter “we’ve been through five of ‘is safehouses, an’ he’s definitely running out’er places to go. We’re gettin’ closer to the bastard.” 

“You said that last week” Simmons pointed out, edges of anger in her voice.

May shrugged “We’re making progress, you know what Ward’s like.”

“Yeah, we do, traitorous asshole.” Daisy muttered bitterly, and Natasha wanted to ask who Ward was. 

“We’ll get him” Coulson said calmly “Daisy, Mack, want to feedback about the Caterpillar project?”

Daisy smiled at that and Mack said proudly “We finished the Cocoon yesterday, we’re officially up and running!”

A general murmur of congratulation went round the group, and Bobbi grabbed her cup, toasting ‘to the caterpillars.’

“And the Caterpillars?” May asked when they’d finished, and Mack gestured to Daisy across the table. 

“They’re your team” Daisy said, gesturing back, and something passed between them. A quirk of an eyebrow that Natasha read concern into, and a slight shrug of her Pauchok’s shoulders as she avoided the question. 

“Nah” Mack said “I’m head of the project but they’re your team.”

Daisy shrugged, but there was genuine enthusiasm in her voice when she launched in “They’re all doing really well, Lincoln and Elena are glad to be done with building and wiring, Joey’s starting to make real progress now he’s mastered those breathing exercises Andrew gave him, Ben’s stopped jumping at his own shadow and is starting to enjoy himself – although Jeni says she’s gonna murder him if one more finger puppet makes it’s way into her bunk. Jeni’s doing amazingly herself though, Lincoln says she’s just about ready to start working up here with Simmons when necessary. Oh, and the dampeners FitzSimmons made for Arin are working so well he cried when he first put them on, and I’ve got him slowly lowering the settings for periods of time to acclimatise. Sophie’s still doing amazingly well with her portals, but we’ve got a ways to go before she agrees to go back to her parents, she really doesn’t want to leave her brother and to be honest, I don’t think I want to make her. Mack and I wanted to ask what you guys thought about a compromise, she spends at least every other night at home, and goes back to school, and she can visit every day and join the team when she graduates next year like she wants. What do you think?”

There was a short silence as everyone thought about it. “She’d be an asset” Fitz said, breaking the silence.

“She’s 17” May said flatly

“She’d be almost 19 when she joined, and she’s keen.” Daisy countered

“That’s still seriously young” Bobbi pointed out. 

“You got into espionage before you finished uni luv” Hunter said “I say let the kid join.”

“The Caterpillars will be in a lot more danger than I was as a rookie though.”

“She’ll still have to pass the tests to join the team” Daisy interjected “And both Simmons and Jeni’s medicals. Coulson, you’ve done a lot of recruitment work before, what do you think?”

The rest of the team fell silent as they turned to the director, and Natasha wanted desperately to ask who the hell the Caterpillars were, but she’d been trained as a spy since she could remember, and no spy got information best from asking direct questions in this sort of context.

“She’s not going to leave her brother is she?”

“Not a chance” Daisy said confidently.

Coulson paused, then “How much does she want to join?”

“Bad”

“As much as you did?”

“She said she’s wanted to join the police since her parents were killed, and this is even better. Protecting people has been her dream for nine years. We’re not going to change her mind about it, especially when she could easily go off and try it alone.”

“You think she might go rogue?” Coulson asked sharply

Daisy looked uncertainly at Mack, who shrugged “The only thing more important to Sophie than her dream is Arin, I don’t think she’ll do anything that might drag Arin into the field before he’s ready.”

“So she could go rogue when he’s better?”

“It’s possible”

Daisy sighed “It’s likely” she admitted “she’s like I was when you picked me up, but you know, not a Hacktivist. She believes it’s the right thing to do.”

“You think she’ll follow orders on the team?”

“I think so, especially if we make sure she understands the importance of it. She can be an asset Coulson, I know she can, but she’s gonna need support and training, or she’ll wind up dead.”

“Ok Daisy, I trust your judgement. What you’re saying is she’s an asset, but she’s young and she doesn’t want to wait? Yes?”

“Thats about it yeah.”

“OK, give her the compromise about school and visiting you suggested, but let her train on the weekends and a couple evenings a week too, with the promise that she can start training seriously to join the team when she graduates. _But_ , tell her that if we hear of her going out on her own in any way, that’s it, she’s done. There’s to be no going rogue.”

“Got it Boss” Daisy said with a grin “I’ll make sure she knows how much more good she can do with a team than alone too. And Arin and their adoptive parents will keep an eye on her too.”

The conversation turned to an intel operation that Bobbi and May were planning, and Natasha let it fade to the background as she ran over what she’d learned. It was pretty obvious from Daisy’s comments about ‘dampeners’ and ‘portals’ that these ‘caterpillars’ were powered people, enhanced or the inhumans Coulson had described very briefly – inhumans like her Pauchok’s father. Which made it suddenly clear why J.A.R.V.I.S recently kept picking up rumours and reports about people with powers, but could never find anything except the initial report, which tended to disappear anyway. Clearly new SHIELD had been dealing with them, and erasing signs of it on the internet at least. They seemed to be doing a good job of it, but Natasha was more interested in why it was her Daisy’s team. Was it because she had a family connection to the inhumans, or was it something more. She thought about the brother and sister referred to, and felt suddenly sick. Could the phenomenon run in families? Could her Pauchok develop powers? 

Coulson had said one of his agents had developed powers before they’d met the inhumans. Daisy was head of the powered team. No. It couldn’t be. Coulson would have … Coulson had been so very brief about the inhumans, so vague about the agent who had gained powers. Coulson who had been undeniably protective when he’d thought she was threatening Daisy. Coulson who looked at Daisy like she was, she was. Jealousy and anger hit Natasha so hard she almost, almost let it show on her face. Pauchok was  _ hers _ . Her baby, her Pauchok. She felt herself stiffen, and under the table Clint’s hand slipped into hers, squeezing tightly until she relaxed.

It wasn’t fair, she knew it wasn’t fair, to feel like this. Coulson had been there for her baby when she hadn’t, hadn’t failed Daisy like she had. But the thought of Coulson having that with the daughter she’d only just met, knowing things about Daisy that he wasn’t telling her... It twisted her gut in jealousy as much as worry ached in her chest at the thought that Daisy could be the agent who was changed in that city.

She was broken out of her thoughts by the two scientists starting to talk animatedly, the conversation clearly having moved on from from the intel gathering mission they’d been recapping. 

“We think we’ve finally got a version with total mobility without the shut-down problems. _Obviously_ , we couldn’t fix the sensory and fine motor abilities without compromising the internal current flow because of the electrical interference from the Olverian power-cell, and we can’t use a different power-cell _obviously_ because the Olverian is the only decent power-cell that doesn’t rely on technology from the _seventeen hundreds_ to keep the current flowing safely, but Jemma suggested using epidermal re-electrilised nano-cells from a hypersensitive animal like...”

By the time the scientist was finished, after several interruptions from Simmons (who was starting to make it look like she and Fitz could rival her and Clint for levels of being in-synch), Nat had gathered that she would never understand the science the two were babbling off like it was the most obvious thing in the world, the pair would get on terrifyingly well with Tony and Bruce, and they were building a robotic hand for Coulson.

“What happened to your hand?” she and Clint asked simultaneously when the pair finally finished, and everyone suddenly turned to look at her. To be fair, it was the first time she or Clint had spoken since the meal had started, even though they were already most of the way through the brownies and ice-cream that had followed the pasta. They’d both taken the silent decision to let what was clearly a casual weekly team ritual go on as normal, and faded into the background as much as they could while sitting at a table. Which, given their training, was a significant amount, even being visiting Avengers. 

Coulson answered into the silence “Lost it in the fight for the Iliad.”

“Completely?” Clint asked.

In response Coulson raised his hands and twisted one of them off.

“Oh” said Clint. 

“Nice replacement” was all Nat commented, which unfortunately set the science twins off again. 

“It is not a nice replacement, the sensory abilities on it are...” said Simmons over the top of Fitz pointing out flaws in the wiring, until Daisy gave a sigh and stood up. 

“Stop it you two and come help me make everyone hot drinks. Everyone want their normal?”

A murmurs of affirmative ran round the table, and Daisy turned to her and Clint expectantly, and after a beat Natasha realised her daughter was asking what she wanted, and an ache spread through her at the thought that she had to ask, as if she was a stranger.

“I’ll come help” she said instead.

“No, no, we’ve got it” Fitz said, jumping out of his chair and pulling Simmons up with him. The slightly panicked look on Daisy’s face twisted something in Natasha’s gut, but she reminded herself she shouldn’t crowd Daisy. It wasn’t fair. 

“Coffee, black.” she said instead, and Clint chimed in after with his own, horrendously sweet preference. 

The trio vanished through a door, and for a moment silence fell, before Hunter spoke up “Sooooo, is the meeting over yet?”

“I think so” Coulson said, looking part amused and part confused. 

“Soooo we don’t have to run drills if we ask for stories now then, cus’ I’m sure they’ve got some great ones.”

A sigh came from May, who it seemed must have threatened the team before they arrived, which Hunter seemed to take as permission, and turned eagerly to her and Clint. Clint, mercifully, saved her from the necessity of interacting by launching into a story about one of their earlier missions, when they’d gotten into a street chase on bikes through crowded Indonesian streets. At some point in the story, Daisy (who Natasha felt nervous about just not being able to see) and the scientists returned with handfuls of mugs, which they passed round, and settled into the rest of the story. Clint finished the story (a situation involving two cows, a dozen chickens, no less than six bike crashes and in the middle of the chaos, a  _ very _ muddy arrest of their targets) with flare, and the table burst into appreciative laughter, which cut off suddenly as Bobbi clapped a hand over her mouth, shocked at her high-pitched laugh, and Mack reached up to rub his throat in confusion at his strange sounding one. 

There was a beat of silence, then Daisy and FitzSimmons burst into squeals of laughter again, and Bobbi groaned.

“What did you put in my tea?” she asked, her high voice only sending the trio into new fits of laughter. 

“And my coffee?” complained Mack, his voice going louder and softer with each syllable. 

“And what’ve you put in the rest of our brews?” Hunter finished, examining his cup suspiciously. 

Natasha felt her lips twitch, wishing she had a camera to capture the look of blissful hilarity on her Pauchok’s face. She looked so  _ happy _ . So blissfully happy and so utterly  _ alive _ she could cry with the wonderfulness of it all. Clint’s hand tightened in hers again, and she turned to see warm support in his eyes, and a shared joy, for her. 

Eventually though, Daisy managed to reign in her giggles, and say that they’d only spiked two of the drinks, and Simmons reeled off some chemical combinations she’d put in them, and how long they’d last (half an hour) to general amusement, and Bobbi and Mack’s resigned sighs. Simmons then turned to them again

“May we have another story? Please? We missed the beginning of that one.” 

Her doe eyes and soft manners were undeniably sweet, and Natasha could feel Clint melting next to her, but before she could speak she said “Tell me about one of your missions first, Coulson said you were a mobile unit before SHEILD fell? What was that like”

It was a blatant way of fishing for information about Daisy, and both Coulson and May shot her a  _ look _ “I doubt our stories are as interesting as yours. Our missions must seem boring in comparison to Avenger work.”

Unfortunately for Coulson, the scientists (who Natasha was really starting to like) completely missed Coulson’s hint “Boring! We almost blew ourselves up with tesseract energy our second mission!”

Natasha felt her stomach drop out of her body, and it must have shown on her face because Daisy said weakly “It wasn’t that bad”

Simmons however, looked at her in amazement “We almost got shot by rebels! And then we could have been blown up by the 084 Ward just yanked out the wall and dragged through a car chase like it wasn’t worse than a nuclear bomb and then we got hijacked and tied up and then we blew a hole in the plane at 24 thousand feet!”

Natasha wondered for a moment if it would give something away if she dragged Pauchok away for a medical exam  _ right now _ and then locked her in a room far, far away from anything remotely dangerous. 

Coulson sighed in resignation, and said tiredly “You know, you never did tell me whose idea it was to put a hole in the Bus.”

And somehow, the fact that they’d  _ intended _ to blow a hole in a flying plane they were currently on did  _ not _ ease Natasha’s mind any that her daughter hadn’t almost died a thousand times since joining SHIELD. She wondered for an instant whether it would be worth it to murder Coulson. Possibly. 

“Uh, maybe you could tell us the rest of that story?” Clint asked a little painfully from next to her, and Nat realised she was crushing his fingers with her hand. She forced herself to loosen her grip. 

The five remaining members of the Bus crew, the crew May had said was mostly put together to look after Coulson if something went very wrong, between them told the story of the 084 they’d gone to retrieve, and what they’d done to retain control over it. The details didn’t really do much to ease the knot of very belated fear in her stomach. 

Fuck. She was beyond compromised.

Simmons turned to her eagerly when the story was over, but before she could even try to think of a story she wouldn’t mind sharing with Daisy, May spoke up firmly.

“That’s enough for tonight. You all have work to do. Daisy, you need to go talk to Sophie, and you owe me half an hour in the shooting range when you’ve settled your caterpillars. FitzSimmons, go finish whatever that design you were playing with was, Bobbi – physical therapy. Hunter, Mack, go make yourselves scarce before I find you something to do.”

Groans of disappointment came from the both scientists and Hunter, but they dispersed without much ado. Natasha moved without even thinking to follow Daisy, but found May firmly in her path, the refusal clear even in her blank expression.

“Give her space” she said flatly.

“But...” she couldn’t help saying, panic rising in her chest as she watched her daughter vanish out of sight again. 

May’s face softened, ever so slightly “She’s not going to disappear” she said, gently “And you have to give her space. The Cocoon is her place and you won’t go there unless invited by and only by her.”

For a moment Natasha wanted to protest. Wanted to point out that May couldn’t stop her from going where-ever she liked. Wanted to say that Daisy was her daughter, and May had no right to keep her away from her. But May was clearly Daisy’s SO, and Daisy clearly looked up to her, and May was right, even if she hated it. Crowding Daisy wasn’t fair.

So instead she nodded “I have some questions for Coulson anyway.”

May snorted “I wouldn’t bet on getting any answers. Daisy will probably be back in a couple of hours if you want to  _ ask _ to join her in the shooting range. She’d better get her training done though.”

Nat nodded gratefully at her old friend, feeling grateful that Daisy had someone looking out of her, and understanding albeit grudgingly that May  _ did _ want her to get to know Daisy, but would put Daisy above that desire in a heartbeat if she thought it best for Daisy. 

She tried to ignore how her stomach felt at the thought that her old friend clearly needed to restrain her from overwhelming her daughter. She could keep her head better than this. She was the Black Widow dammit! 

But she was so, so fucking compromised. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a day ends and begins with guns and May runs out of patience before 6am

Two hours later, Daisy walked back to the main base, still smiling from the time she’d spent with her team. While the caterpillars weren’t family in the way that Coulson, May and FitzSimmons, and increasingly Mack, Bobbi and Hunter, were, they were friends and teammates, close despite the fact they’d only been a team for a month or so. 

Mack was right when he said that while he was head of the project, it was her team. He was down in the Cocoon almost as often as she was, but while he trained with them, cooked with them and hung out with them, he wasn’t inhuman, and she was. It wasn’t that Mack was any less part of the team, just that there were certain things her friend just couldn’t understand about having your DNA change and suddenly gaining powers, or the feel of those powers themselves. The feeling of being different, and somehow still lost in it, that bound them together in shared confusion and the joy of their gifts.

Even today, when it felt like her whole world had been turned upside down yet again, the cocoon made something loosen in her gut, as did the hour she’d spent sparring with Lincoln, Elena and Ben. There was something undeniably fun about the casual training sessions where they as much play-fought and experimented with their powers as actually tried to take their opponent down. Despite the many aching points around her body from hitting the wall after over-powering her flip over Lincoln (she really hadn’t gotten the hang of flying yet), she felt much more relaxed when they’d finished.

Her good mood had only been furthered when Sophie had taken the news that she was not going to be allowed on the team yet fairly well, grudgingly accepting the compromise after only five minutes of pleading, and had even joined in the board games showing she didn’t bear a grudge. Daisy had lost spectacularly at both games they’d had time to play, but enjoyed herself anyway.

She’d lingered longer than she usually did in the evening, even though she knew she’d be back down for more serious training with Mack tomorrow. But if she was honest it wasn’t leaving the Cocoon she was avoiding, but going back to the Playground. Where Natasha Romanoff was probably waiting for her. Where her mother was waiting for her.

A tangled mix of warmth and fear rushed through her just at the thought of the red-head. Warmth at the thought of the exchange they’d had in her bunk, of the way the woman had hugged her, had said she wanted to get to know her. Fear at the thought of actually getting to know the spy, of getting attached. Daisy had learned young as Mary Sue Poots how much getting attached hurt when you inevitably got sent back. And everyone sent her back, sooner or later. Even her birth father had sent her back in a way. What was to say her mom would even want her once she realised what a mess she was? 

_ Coulson and May haven’t sent you back _ pointed out a voice in her head, and she relaxed slightly at the truth. But Coulson and May weren’t her parents. Except... No. Not going there. Whatever the unspoken  _ something _ was, she wasn’t going to ruin it by wishing for more. 

She walk back to the Playground was short, and she arrived in less than five minutes, even walking fairly slowly. The underground tunnel connecting the Playground to the newly finished Cocoon was dimly lit, but well made, and she could find her way along it blindfolded. She grabbed the ladder to climb back up into the Playground, and made her way towards the shooting range to put in the half-hour of target practice she’d been about to do when an alarm announced the disabling of a perimeter sensor hours and a lifetime ago. She wasn’t overly surprised to see the range was already occupied when she arrived. 

Natasha looked up from where she was idly dismantling a gun and Daisy felt utterly lost for a moment. What was she supposed to call her? Agent Romanoff? Natasha? Mom??? 

“Hi” she said instead, trying to act like her usual spirited self. 

A soft smile spread across the redheaded spy’s face, small and hesitant, but real, and Daisy wondered if she’d be able to tell when the woman’s smiles weren’t real.

“Daisy” she said, voice thick with unsaid things “Is it ok if we join you?”

Warmth spread through Daisy’s stomach, even as she reminded herself not to get attached. She could still send her back.

“Depends” she replied, trying to keep her voice light “do I get tips from Hawkeye?”

The blond-haired agent leaning casually against the wall grinned at her in a way that Daisy instantly liked “Gun or bow?” he asked

“Gun” she answered “May would kick my ass if she caught me playing around with something as difficult to hide as a bow.”

“You’d be surprised how many ways there are to hide a bow” Hawkeye said with a waggle of his eyebrows and a grin that spoke of a thousand stories. 

Daisy felt her lips twitch as she went to the locker to collect a gun and some ammunition, as well as ear protectors and goggles. She dismantled the gun with careful movements, carefully noting the difference between the safety and the clip release. She would  _ die _ if she got the two mixed up in front of Hawkeye, never mind the Black Widow. 

“So, you’re my niece huh?” Hawkeye said behind her, and she flicked a glance back in confusion, glancing between her and Black Widow. 

“I didn’t know you were....”

“We’re not” Natasha interrupted, then added “technically” as her partner shot her a mock hurt look. 

“She’s ‘Auntie Nat’ to my kids, I figure I’m ‘Uncle Clint’ to hers” the archer said.

“You have kids?” she blurted in surprise “Your file doesn’t say..” she cut herself off, but it was too late. 

“You’ve read my file?” ‘Uncle Clint’ said, voice caught between amused and smug. 

Daisy could feel herself turning scarlet and she bent her head quickly over the gun again. “We went through all the Avenger’s files” she admitted “After Hydra came out. Coulson vouched for you two and May said that if Strike Team Delta was Hydra they’d have taken over the world by now, but we checked anyway because the paperwork needed to look unbiased. Plus, if any of the Avengers turned out to be Hydra and we missed it...”

“It would be bad” Natasha finished, not sure if she was miffed her daughter had investigated her team, proud that her daughter had investigated the Avengers just to be sure, or sick at the thought of her daughter reading her file. She thought she was going to go with sick as seconds ticked on. 

“Yeah” Daisy said “Plus it was more interesting than trawling through the rest of the files Black Wi... well, you know about that” she said, suddenly remembering that she was talking to one of the people responsible for the data-dump that had resulted in hours upon hours upon hours spent going through old paperwork in order to work out what Hydra had been doing all that time in SHIELD. “Anyway, yeah, Trip and I went through all the files and I verified as much as we could, and there was no mention of kids.”

Clint shrugged casually “Fury arranged for my wife and kids to be kept totally off-record. Keeps them safe.”

“Should you really be telling me about them then?”

A shrug “You’re family” and warmth washed over Daisy like she’d just sunk into a hot bath. The way he’d said it, that casual acceptance, it meant something, coming from a man Daisy knew had ‘serious trust-issues’ written in his file, along with other less diplomatic ways of putting it.

She was pretty sure her face was betraying everything she was feeling, but her hands had finished assembling the gun, so she could only blank her face as much as she could before she turned round, pointing the gun, even with the safety on, at the ground infront of her feet. May had had  _ plenty _ to say on the topic of gun safety when she’d started training her after they’d moved into the Playground. She glanced up once at her mother, noting the blank face with the eyes still swarming with emotion before she turned back to Uncle Clint. 

“So, any tips?”

Clint waved a hand at the targets “Lemme see you shoot first”

Daisy grabbed ear protectors, and passed another set to Natasha, offering Clint a pair which he waved away in favour of adjusting his hearing aids. Daisy faced the target and let her breathing slow, steadying one hand with the other arm as she’d been taught. Breath in. Breath out. Fire. Breath in. Breath out. Fire. Repeat. Five neat shots all within the inner two target rings on the paper target. She let a slight smile dance over her lips in satisfaction before she remembered who she was in the range with and felt her cheeks burn. She turned back round, pulling off her headphones.

“May’s teaching you well” Natasha said, voice unreadable, and Daisy wondered what she was hiding beneath. 

Was she lying? Did she really think Daisy was terrible? Did she not like that she was learning to shoot? Did she wish her daughter was better?

There wasn’t time to dwell on it though, as ‘Uncle Clint’ was already launching in with suggestions about her stance and tips about how she could improve her accuracy and speed.

Half an hour later and Daisy was looking at five tightly grouped holes inside the smallest circle of a new target and feeling a wide smile tug at her mouth. Hawkeye was a damn good teacher! May came in just as she hit the switch to pull the targets towards her to tidy up, and she nodded approvingly. 

“Good shots, you got a moment?” which coming from May, was very high praise, and Daisy felt her smile returning. 

“Sure, what do you need?”

“We got a mission tomorrow, a lead on one of Whitehall's associates, high society businessman, he’s having a charity ball tomorrow so we need to work fast.”

Daisy nodded, seeing where she was going with this “You want me to hack their security?”

“Add in some guests yeah” May confirmed “But we want you with us tomorrow too, we’re going to search the place, we’ll need you to work on the security from inside.”

“Caleb, Janis and Monica again?”

“Same idea, different names, Bobbi’s working on it now. Should be a simple mission, in and out.”

“I’ll go help Bobbi set up” Daisy said, finishing dismantling the gun and putting it safely back into the locker. 

“Goodnight Uncle Clint, goodnight uhmm” she stuttered off awkwardly, cursing herself inwardly. 

“Natasha” the redhead offered up, and Daisy grabbed it gratefully. 

“Goodnight Natasha” she said, and promptly fled.

Behind her she heard her SO ask “Uncle Clint?? You better not teach my rookie to shoot arrows Barton!”

\------------

Thankfully, Coulson had seemed to take it as read that they would be staying the night, and had someone prepare a couple of adjacent bunks for them. Clint and Nat by silent agreement slipped into one together, and sat on the bed. 

Neither spoke, but Clint shifted in such a way as to pose a question, and Nat let out a heavy sigh.

“I was 19” she signed.

“KGB mark?”

“An inhuman who could drain life from people. Something about it must have, you know.”

Clint nodded minutely, signing back “You left her in Hunan?”

Nat nodded back, letting her face darken with the memory, and with the story she’d eventually dragged out of Coulson. Hydra tearing through the safe haven she’d left her little girl in. A man dying to bring another back to youth. A village slaughtered to bring that man back. The hunt for Daisy and what had followed in the village. What had happened at Afterlife and on the Ilyiad. 

Clint shifted slightly, communicating without words, spoken or signed, a hurt question.

Natasha squirmed.

Clint quirked an eyebrow.

Natasha glared back “You didn’t need to know” she signed irritated.

Clint raised his eyebrow properly.

“I did _not_ need to talk about it”

“You cried after you held Lila for the first time.” Clint signed back pointedly. 

Natasha blinked, communicating her surprise. It wasn’t often over the years that she hadn’t noticed being observed. Finally, she sighed, and let her shoulders slump. “You know why I didn’t tell you.” she signed.

Clint sent her back a supremely unimpressed look that reiterated all the times he’d told her to stop bottling things up until she exploded and threw a knife at someone. Or worse. “Not facing things doesn’t make them ok” he signed back.

Natasha gave him a glare that would send the vast majority of the world sprinting for cover. Clint shrugged and just sat, waiting her out. Sometimes, Nat wished her partner didn’t know her quite so well.

But this was Clint, and he did know her that well. And this was Clint and he had her back, in firefights and missions gone FUBAR and he still had her back when she turned out to have a daughter and that daughter turned out to be suddenly alive. He was Clint and he was one of the only people in the world she knew how to be herself with. He was Clint and he was one of the few people in the world she trusted.

“I don’t know what to do.” she signed, and it was amazing how hands could give the impression of a voice wavering without a sound – or any intention to do so. 

Clint leaned back against the wall and held an arm for her to curl under, as if this was another post-op wait on a cold roof for extraction. “We’ll work it out.” he whispered, his voice strangely loud after all the signing.

“She might not want me to.” Natasha stated, leaning back, because she was the Black Widow and she did not say such blatantly insecure things as “She might not want to know me.”

“Nat” Clint said, in the same voice he used to tell her for the hundredth time to stop terrifying the junior agents “that kid wants you to love her so much she’s too scared to want it.”

“That makes zero sense Barton” Nat complained, but she finally relaxed into her best friends not-hug (Master assassins did not _hug_ thank you very much). 

“Hush you.” Clint replied, then ooffed as Natasha stuck an elbow into his side. 

“You did _not_ just tell me to hush!”

\-------------------------

Nat startled awake long before the sun had risen – not that they could see the sun in the underground base, but the point stood. A glance at her watch told her it was 3am and she should really go back to her fitful sleep, but the overwhelming _ need  _ to make  _ sure _ yesterday hadn’t been an amazing and exquisitely cruel dream had her slipping out from under the blanket, and leaving Clint alone in the bed. 

It was far from the first time she’d shared a bed with Clint (they had shared beds on numberless ops, and in the tortured aftermath of more than one of those ops, and more times than either could count they had slipped into each other’s rooms and beds after a nightmare that wouldn’t leave one of them alone. Even at the farm, it wasn’t unheard of for either to wake up in the middle of the night to someone extra slipping in, needing the warmth and understanding only the other haunted half of Strike Team Delta could offer), but this time she took extra care not to wake him as she left, slipping a pillow against his side and tucking the blanket in tight to keep the heat in before she left the room. 

She slipped soundlessly down the Playground corridors, already having saved a basic map of the base in her mind. The halls had dim lighting, even during the night – or very early morning as it was – but she was still near invisible as she moved from shadow to shadow, soundless on dancer’s feet. She opened Daisy’s door silently – a feat given the slight ting of a bell as she inched the door inwards, which had to be stilled (a simple trick for the widow involving climbing up the handholdless door frame, and slipping a wire around the door and then slowly slowly moving wire and door together until she could work a finger round and unhook the bell, before opening the door, closing it, hooking the bell up again for good measure, and dropping silently to the floor. Simple.).

Her Pauchok was beautiful.

Even, or perhaps especially, sleeping, she looked beautifully, wonderfully, impossibly alive. A miracle that was really starting to sink into Nat’s chest, into a part of herself she’d long accepted had died in agony in a ghost village in Hunan province. A miracle that made her feel like there was hope in the world again. A miracle that made her feel like she wasn’t damned, because her little girl hadn’t been made to pay, by the universe or karma or some cruel stroke of fate, for the red pouring from her ledger.

‘I’ll keep you safe, I’ll protect you little spider’ she’d whispered to her baby, but she’d failed. She’d failed and found an upturned crib in a ransacked house in a village without a single living soul. 

But here she was, messy brown hair strewn over a pillow, curled inwards on her side hugging the duvet to herself, cheek pressed into the pillow and face utterly peaceful in sleep.

Her Pauchok. Her baby spider.

Not a baby any longer, but an adult, a strong, confident, caring person, with a fire in her that Nat could already see even with the little interaction they’d had. Not a baby any longer. And for a moment the loss of it cut so deep it took her breath away.

She’d never again get to rock her baby girl to sleep. She’d never get to hold her tiny hands as she learned to walk. Never hear her first words or stick her pictures up on her fridge. She’d never read Daisy bedtime stories or teach her to sound the words out. She’d never get to take a photo before her first day of school and take her for ice-cream after as Clint had Cooper and Lila. She’d missed out on all her baby girls firsts and she knew, she  _ knew _ from the way Daisy held herself, from the very fact that she’d ended up with SHIELD, that Daisy had not been loved nearly enough in her life. Loved people did not agree to join crazy teams living on a plane and almost getting killed every other day. And that was on her, an unforgivable failure marked forever in her ledger, that her little girl had grown up unloved and unwanted. Had almost not grown up at all. 

But she’d protect her now. She’d do it if it was the last thing she did.

Slowly, she felt a knot in her chest loosen, her daughters deep, even breathing lulling her, and as the minutes ticked past, her eyes gently slid shut, and for the first time that night, Natasha Romanoff fell into a proper sleep.

\----------------

“ _shit!_ ”

The sudden, stunned, panicked expletive had Natasha moving before her mind had fully snapped back to wakefulness. She hit the floor as three icer blasts hit the back of the chair she’d just vacated, and she’d rolled up and towards the wall before the gun redirected, hitting the floor with two more quickly fired shots. 

Her daughter apparently slept with a gun.

Natasha deeply approved.

“It’s ok. It’s ok.” she said, her voice low and calm even as she kept moving. 

She didn’t need to though, as Daisy’s eyes were already showing recognition (along with an unhealthy level of adrenaline for before six in the morning) and the gun was lowering.

Unfortunately just then the door crashed open (with a abrupt peal from the bell still hung above the door) and Bobbi, closely followed by May ran in, both brandishing guns. Bobbi instantly zeroed in on the person who shouldn’t have been in the room, levelled the gun unflinchingly between her eyes. 

“Hands up!”

Natasha, although she could have taken the other agent (although possibly not Agent May at the same time – or at least, not easily), did as she was told. She didn’t want to start a fight.

May pointed her own gun at her, although with rather less focused aggression after a moment of recognition.

“ _Natasha_!” the older agent scolded, her voice a recognition and rebuke all in one. 

“My bad.” she apologized slightly guiltily. May glared but lowered her gun. Bobbi didn’t. 

“What were you doing?”

“Stand down Morse” May ordered wearily. Bobbi lowered her gun a fraction, then raised it again. 

“What were you doing?”

“Bobbi, it’s ok, she’s um, it’s ok.” Daisy said, sitting up in bed now and with the gun pointing at the floor. 

Bobbi Morse slowly, hesitantly, lowered the gun, keeping her eyes focused on the Black Widow.

“What were you doing?” she demanded again, and May turned to look at her again, her eyes demanding an answer. 

Natasha floundered. Dammit! Why had she fallen asleep! She was the Black Widow for crying out loud! She did not fall asleep in places she shouldn’t be! May was half glaring half smirking at her, clearly daring her to find a good answer for this one. Before she could answer though, Daisy did.

“Were you watching me sleep???” 

Natasha did not blush. She did not blush because she had been training how to be a spy since she could remember and she knew perfectly well how to stop her face from turning red. She  _ did not _ blush. She did not give the slightest indication that she was embarrassed, even if Barton was going to laugh at her for this until he passed out. And then wake up and keep laughing. She was never going to live this down. 

“Why would the Black Widow watch you sleep?” Bobbi asked, confusion and lingering suspicion in her voice, glancing between her and Daisy. Natasha felt her stomach sink as slowly dawning shock washed over the spy’s face and her eyes went wide. 

“You, you’re, the black..” the blond stuttered before pulling herself together to demand of her teammate “When were you gonna tell us you were related to _an Avenger??”_

Daisy shrank back a little, a tiny movement, but Nat caught it and shoved forwards into Agent Morse’s personal space. “Leave her alone.”

Bobbi had the good sense to take a step back, and raise the gun again, but May stepped between them, her tone indicating that it may only be 5-something-am but she is already tired of their shit “They only found out yesterday.”

Bobbi glanced around the room “Why didn’t you know before?”

May groaned “I’ll explain over coffee, I doubt any of us are getting back to sleep. Natasha, I trust you’re done giving us heart attacks for the morning?”

“For the morning” she agreed smoothly, although she let her face send an apology to May, who accepted it with an irritated twitch of her eyebrow and a quirk of the side of her lip that told Nat she was going to make absolutely certain Clint heard about this and she was going to enjoy it immensely. 

Then the door closed behind them and she turned back to Daisy, now looking a little less like she might have a heart attack.

“Uh, could you not do that again please?” Daisy asked

“I’m sorry” she said, and meant it. She’d woken up to blood and guns enough herself to know the visceral panic that swept over you when you woke up to someone in your space. 

Daisy shrugged “Were you really watching me sleep?”

“I was, then I fell asleep too” she admitted, still adamantly refusing to blush. 

Daisy blinked “I’m not sure if that’s cute or creepy.”

“You were dead” Nat says, and it surprises her as much as it does Daisy because she hadn’t meant to say that. Daisy is undoing her in ways she isn’t prepared for, and now she has to explain stupid things she hadn’t meant to say. “Yesterday morning. You were dead. And now you’re not. I mean, you weren’t dead, but I thought you were and, well...”

“You needed to check” Daisy said, and Nat reads a mix of touched and lost in the perplexed look in Daisy’s face. Like she doesn’t quite know what to do with someone worrying about her enough to break into her room at night. 

“I’m sorry” she repeats

Daisy shrugs again “Sorry for shooting at you I guess”

Nat feels a real smile tug at her face “Don’t be. They were good shots.” and Daisy bursts out laughing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because Natasha is definitely the kind of person to be proud her daughter sleeps with a gun.
> 
> Unfortunately, I may not be able to update for a while, I'm travelling really soon and partly because of that starting tomorrow I won't have reliable internet. I'll try to update tomorrow and the day after, but I can't promise anything, and I definitely won't be able to post for a few days after that :-( If I don't manage to get the internet to cooperate at least tomorrow though I'll make sure there's a long update latest Monday :-)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, I'm new to ao3 and I haven't worked out how most things work yet - does anyone know why all my italics become normal text and how I can make them stay??? I use italics quite a lot, so it's a pain that they don't appear. 
> 
> Also, to those who comment, I read and deeply appreciate all comments, but am focusing on writing so will probably not reply to most of them. They are read and they really encourage me to write though, so keep sending them!!!

By the time Natasha, now with Clint in tow, turns up in the kitchen, Daisy is inhaling an impressively large bowl of cereal while Bobbi drank coffee and May cooked something on the stove. Nat had told Clint where she’d been, and how the morning had started in a flat voice that  _ dared _ her partner to laugh at her (with kind of dare that comes with the promise of extreme violence), hoping to get the worst of it over with quickly. Clint of course had ignored the obvious threat of pain and laughed himself sick, only stopping when Nat nudged one of her knives close enough to his crotch to make him go white and tone it down to the occasional chuckle. She knew she hadn’t heard the end of this, not by a long shot. 

“Hungry?” she asked her daughter amusedly as Clint grabbed a cereal bowl from the cupboard (Natasha didn’t bother wondering how Clint knew which cupboard, Clint just always knew around food).

Bobbi glanced up from her coffee “Oh, she’s just getting started, it’s some inhuman thing.”

Daisy surfaced from her bowl “Simmons thinks some of the energy for our powers comes from food”

It’s the first time her Pauchok has admitted to her powers in her presence, and Nat makes sure to keep her face blank as the woman’s eyes flicker to her, then back to her food.

“Makes sense” Clint said, grabbing the cereal box “Bruce, Steve and Thor eat enough for nine men after a mission, makes sense if their strength and stuff comes from food.”

“What’s your excuse then?” Nat asks smoothly, taking a more reasonable amount of cereal for herself. Daisy snorts into her bowl and Nat feels her lips twitch into a smile. 

“Aww, is that any way to treat your uncle Clint? Don’t I even get a good-morning before you laugh at me?”

“Good-morning” Daisy said, cheerfully if through a mouthful of cereal, just as May finished what she’d been doing at the cooker and pushed a plateful of omelette and apple in front of Daisy. 

“Cheerios are not a healthy breakfast” is all the ninja-spy says, but there is warmth in the eyes that meet her rookies. 

Natasha feels suddenly that it ought to be her cooking for Daisy, and twitches towards the cooker before she can stop herself. May’s eyes flick to hers and for a moment they are so deeply possessive Natasha wants to growl, but then its gone and May turns back to the stove as if nothing had happened. 

Clint, who had clearly missed the look turns to her with a smirk “See Nat, some people can say good-morning like normal people. Even if it is cute to see the big tough spy go all protective mama b...”

Then rest of Clint’s sentence is lost as Natasha shoves him sideways off his chair without even looking.

May sighs deeply, and Bobbi looks a little out of her depth but Daisy laughs aloud and Clint smirks with a look that can only translate as ‘I win this point’.

Oh yes, she hadn’t  _ nearly _ heard the end of this. 

\--------------------

Daisy, starving after having been too shocked and nervous to eat that much (for her) the night before, went through a bowl of cereal, an omelette (realising as she did that she couldn’t actually remember when May had started occasionally making her breakfast), an apple, five slices of toast and a cereal bar. Coulson wandered into the kitchen in search of his own coffee and breakfast just as she started clearing up.

“What happened to tai-chi?” He asked by way of good-morning, his question directed in the rough direction of May and Daisy.

Her SO jerked her face expressionlessly towards Natasha, her mother (and Daisy was still struggling to wrap her mind around that) nodding a greeting to Coulson with a ‘who me’ expression in response. Daisy saw on Coulson’s face the moment her da-director _ , her director _ , decided he didn’t want to know and just reached for the coffee.

“Hunter up yet?” he asked conversationally.

“I haven’t poured water over his head yet no” Bobbi replied with a smirk, and Daisy grinned at the older agent, remembering a series of different ways over the months she’d helped Mockingbird wake her partner up. More than one of those ways had involved sudden earth-quaked beds and the results had been rather amusing. 

Coulson didn’t even bother sighing “Just make sure he’s dressed before he runs away.”

Daisy took a moment to shudder at the memory of that particular incident, glad she’d only heard about it rather than actually being there for that one, and finished cleaning her plate and bowl, putting them on the rack to dry before turning to address Coulson.

“I’m gonna go down to the Cocoon for a bit if that’s ok? Ben’s usually up pretty early and Arin doesn’t really sleep so it’s a good chance to work on their powers one on one for a bit.”

Coulson nodded amicably “Don’t be too long though, you’re still doing your usual training with them after lunch right? And I’ve got some coding I need you to do before tonight preferably, although it can wait until tomorrow if it needs too.”

“Yeah, normal training after lunch, Mack said he wanted to work on tactical analysis though, so it might not be that physical, I can probably get the coding done around the edges of the training.”

“Good” May cut in “Then we can do some decent sparring this morning”

Great. May’s definition of ‘decent sparring’ was usually rather painful.

“Copy that” Daisy said resignedly, trying not to think about the amount of time she was going to spend getting acquainted with the mats in the gym. 

“No head shots please. Sarah and Greg are not the kind of parents who would let little Annie come to a charity fundraiser with a black eye. Or get that black eye in the first place.” Coulson pointed out.

“Copy _that_ ” Daisy said with more feeling, and Bobbi snorted into her third mug of coffee (for a spy, she really hated getting up early, especially when she didn’t have to). 

“Parents?” the Black Widow, Natasha, mama, whatever, said from across the table, breaking off her conversation with Hawkeye, a strange catch in her voice. 

Something passed between May, Coulson and the two Avengers sitting at the table too quickly for Daisy to follow, and when Coulson replied deceptively lightly “We’re going in as a family unit” Daisy was sure she’d missed something important. 

There was a long moment of silence, and Daisy felt suddenly nervous, an urge sweeping over her to back out the door before things could start getting messy. 

“Good disguise” Natasha said eventually, and was it just Daisy’s imagination or did she emphasise the second word? Just the slightest bit? 

“Yeah, well, I’m gonna, caterpillars” she stuttered, gesturing out of the kitchen.

“May I come?” Natasha asked, and Daisy felt warmth unfurling inside herself at the way her mother clearly didn’t want her to leave, but close on the heels of this was the desperate need to get away for a while. 24 hours ago she’d been an orphan, now suddenly she had a mother who looked at her with a desperate intensity just asking if she could tag along to the Cocoon.

“Uh” Daisy said “The Cocoon’s umm” she looked desperately to her SO for help, but it was Coulson who spoke. 

“The Cocoon is out of bounds to non-inhumans.”

That wasn’t entirely true. Mack went down to the Cocoon all the time, and FitzSimmons had been down to help with some more sciency parts of building, and both May and Coulson had been down before. But it was true that her caterpillars generally came up to the Playground to meet with the others, and for game-nights and the like. And it was true that it was an unwritten but closely kept rule that Coulson had started (with a series of ‘ask Daisy’s’) that if you weren’t inhuman you didn’t go down to the Cocoon without her permission. Even Mack asked more often than not. The Cocoon was their safe place, and while not entirely a ‘human’ free zone, it wasn’t the same as the Playground either. It was, in some way, their burrow and bolt-hole and Daisy wasn’t quite ready to let Natasha into that vulnerability. It would be like letting the other woman inside her walls, and Daisy knew what happened after she did that. She got sent back. 

Daisy risked a quick look at Natasha to find the assassin’s eyes had blanked, and she felt something tighten in her stomach as panic surged. Had she disappointed her? Would Natasha still want her if she couldn’t let her in? What if she’d blown it already? What if...? But then the woman let her face fall into lines of acceptance and she smiled at Daisy.

“I’ll see you later then.”

“Copy that” Daisy said hastily, and ducked out of the room before she could analyse Agent Romanoff’s smile too much for tells that it was fake. 

\------------

The Cocoon was unsurprisingly quiet when Daisy let herself in, but she found Ben in the kitchen, making pancakes.

“Morning Ben” she said, sliding into a chair and the former chef waved in greeting. The thirty something man had taken a holiday from his job after he’d gone through terrigenisis and subsequently been rescued from his out of control powers by Daisy, which had become leaving his job when the SHIELD team had offered him a place on the Caterpillar Initiative. He’d been with them for two months, longer than anyone except Lincoln, but the habit of waking up early to start up a kitchen didn’t seem to have weakened any. 

“Morning Quake” Ben replied cheerfully “Want some pancakes?”

“I’ve had breakfast”

“So? Want some?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Ben grinned at her as he gestured to get a plate. “So, what’s up?”

“Had an early start to the day, thought I’d come down and see if you or Arin wanted to practice? Where is Arin anyway?”

“Sleeping. Fitz’s dampeners are helping more by the day.”

Daisy let a relieved smile flick across her face “Good, I was getting worried about him”

“We all were” Ben said, switching off the stove and sliding into a seat across the table, placing the pancake plate in the middle. He grabbed a pancake before reaching for the bottle of syrup before Daisy cut in.

“Dare you to do it hands-free” 

Ben, despite clearly knowing she was baiting him into practising his powers, grinned at the challenge. He sat back in his chair and held his hand out towards the syrup bottle, his face tightening in concentration. Slowly, despite the brightly lit kitchen, shadows crept out across the table and curled around the syrup, lifting it slowly up and bringing in over his pancakes. Another moment had it tipping forwards, before it suddenly all went wrong as the bottle tipped too far and dumped a widening lake of syrup on his breakfast. 

Ben cursed and lunged forward physically to remove the bottle, and looked mournfully down at his food.

“Stick another pancake on top and make a sandwich?” Daisy suggested slightly apologetically, and Ben sighed as he did. 

“Practice and food should not be mixed” he grumbled, but Daisy chose to ignore this as the man was already concentrating on his cutlery, trying to make them cut the pancakes up for him without having to physically hold them, and grumbling further when he lost concentration and dropped a pancake laden fork down to his lap. 

Despite Ben’s grumbling and current stickiness though, they both knew he had come incredibly far since he first arrived two months ago, his shadows thrashing all around his, going from solid to nothing constantly and dragging his clothes and hair and limbs and anything movable nearby all over the place in response to his panic. He’d arrived terrified and completely out of control, and the fact that he now could command the shadows to come and go pretty much at will was a testament to the courage, willpower and hard work that he’d put in since then. While he was still having trouble with controlling his solid shadows, the ‘normal’ shadows he could move around and banish without issue, and was now having fun with his gifts. Daisy had seen more elaborate shadow puppets in the last two weeks than she’d seen in her entire life before, and couldn’t help feeling proud of the man whenever he started to play, even if they drove Jeni nuts.

It was a nice second breakfast (although Daisy only ate one pancake, she  _ had _ already eaten and even inhuman bottomless pits (Jemma’s words) had limits), Ben slowly improving with his shadows as he got the hang of the movements he needed the fork to make, although by the time he was finished he did look like he’d been in a food-fight. 

Elena arrived in the kitchen in time to see the tail end of the breakfast/practice session, and raised an amused eyebrow.

“Sit down” Ben said warningly as Elena made for the cooker “I’ll be done in a minute.”

Elena did as directed, shooting Daisy an exasperated look. Daisy just shrugged, they all knew that when Ben decided he was cooking, there was nothing anyone could say or do to change this, he was cooking. Anyway, the former chef’s food tasted significantly better than anyone elses cooking, so they didn’t protest that much. They  _ could _ all cook to some degree, although even Lincoln admitted his cooking barely qualified as edible, but they didn’t take the clear delight in it that Ben did, so the kitchen was usually his domain. 

“You have a plan for today?” Elena asked Daisy as she waited 

Daisy shook her head in response “Mack’s gonna do some tactical training with you guys I think, but May wants me up at the Playground to spar and I’ve got a mission this evening, so you’ve got most of today to do what you want.” It went unsaid that ‘what they wanted’ had to include at least two hours physical training, but they could pick what that training was and unstructured training was usually pretty fun if less intense than the workouts they did together.

Elena nodded in her serious way “When  _ we _ get proper missions?” she asked, gesturing around her at the Cocoon. It was a frustration she’d mentioned before, having left the streets of her home to fight larger battles with her gifts. Despite having been with them two months though, she’d only been allowed on ‘welcome-wagon’ missions, some of which had joined the caterpillars and some of which had gone back after gaining control. 

Daisy sighed “Coulson says the Caterpillars can start taking more routine missions for practice when we have five fighters ready for the field. We’re a ‘weird-shit’ team mostly though.”

Elena smirked, hiding her irritation with the familiar answer “We’re the baby Avengers” she proclaimed, and Daisy winced. She didn’t know the half of it.

“No.” Ben disagreed, turning from the cooker “We’re cooler than the Avengers” he decided firmly, and Daisy laughed aloud. 

The Caterpillars were going to take the world by storm when Ben and Joey were good enough to be called ‘fighters’ and they could get out properly into the field. The world wasn’t going to know what to  _ do _ with them! 

\---------------

Daisy arrived at the Playground gym twenty minutes later to find Black Widow and Hawkeye going full out on the mats, and Hunter and Bobbi (who had finally been cleared by Simmons for ‘very mild training. And  _ no _ sparring.’) watching from the side-lines, trying not to look too impressed. Daisy watched them out of the corner of her eye as she warmed up (May would expect her to be ready to spar when she arrived) and could easily see how Strike Team Delta had walked (or at least limped) out of so many missions that would have killed most other teams. The two of them were fast and brutally accurate, flipping, sliding and rolling over the mats in some combination of punching, kicking and close-body wrestling that was impossible to keep track of. Daisy didn’t even notice that May had arrived until the Black Widow did  _ something _ and Hawkeye hit the mat hard with an arm pinned beneath him the Black Widow sitting on his chest with her spare forearm pressing hard against his windpipe. Hawkeye struggled for a moment, pulling his knees in hard and fast, but Widow just pressed close to his body, out of reach of his kicking legs and Hawkeye smacked the mat hard with his unpinned arm, gasping for breath when his partner removed the pressure on his windpipe. 

“Wrap your hands” May said from behind her, and she nearly leapt a mile. May gave her a smirk which said ‘be more aware of your surroundings then’ and gestured again to her hands. Daisy hurried to do as she was told as on the other side of the gym, Strike Team Delta picked themselves up from the mats and Bobbi went back to her ‘light’ (Simmons was going to scold her later) exercise, Hunter starting in with one of the punching bags hanging on one side of the gym. 

Five minutes later Daisy was hitting the mat herself as her SO flipped her over her shoulder, barely giving her a moment to roll away and up before she was on her again. The world narrowed to May’s wrapped fists and constantly moving limbs, to the next few seconds and staying upright for those seconds. She blocked three blows, twisting inwards to kick May’s exposed side but not fast enough as the agent twisted away, somehow slipping a foot between Daisy’s as she did. Daisy jumped over the leg sweep and managed to catch May hard on the shoulder before she found all the breath knocked from her lungs, she moved quickly enough to dodge the next two punches, but not enough to avoid the leg-sweep that followed, and she found herself pinned to the ground in short order. 

“Urg” she groaned, tapping out. 

“Is this how you fight at the Cocoon?” May demanded, her tone accusative even as she pulled her gently to her feet. 

“None of the caterpillars are up to this level of hand to hand” Daisy said, confused. 

“But you still spar” May said. 

It wasn’t a question. “Yeah, of course” Daisy replied “But we use our powers mostly.”

“Why aren’t you now?” May demanded. 

Daisy resisted the urge to take a step back. May’s hinted at this before, pushing as she asked what else she could have done in the fight, but never outright asked. Her mind flashed for an instant back to Afterlife. To her mentor flipping through the air and hitting the stone ground hard. To the anger burning in her chest that couldn’t quite cover the guilt.

“I’m not ready.”

“You are.” May said.

“I can’t concentrate on both at once” Daisy protested, and it’s not precisely a lie because she really isn’t sure she can, she’s only used a bit of her hand-to-hand fighting when training with her powers in the Cocoon. 

“You won’t learn without trying. Real reason. Now.” May’s voice was hard, her tone leaving no room for disobedience. 

Daisy did take a step back at that, hanging her head, unable to meet her mentor’s eyes. “I could lose control”

“You haven’t for months. Not even yesterday.” When May had told her that, not only was her mother was upstairs but was also the Black freaking Widow, went unsaid. 

Daisy didn’t reply, but neither did she raise her fists to start sparring again.

“You’re not going to hurt me.” May said impatiently, cutting bluntly to the heart of the matter. 

“What if I do?” Daisy asked in a small voice.

“Then you’ll know you can take down pretty much anyone in the field.” May said without the slightest bit of either worry or sympathy. “Now get ready.”

And that was all the warning she gave before attacking a couple of seconds later. Daisy ducked under the punch, twisted away from the kick and lashed out with her own kick, connecting solidly with May’s side but taking a punch a moment later in return, feeling her arm grabbed and the gym spinning as May flipped her through the air. 

“Stop holding back.” May ordered, “We’ve talked about this.”

They had, many times, talked about holding back in training. “I’m not” she lied.

“You are. You’re better than this.” May snaps, and Daisy knows it’s true. She’d been capable of landing solid hits and flipping her mentor for months before Afterlife, but she’s been holding back a little ever since then, the memory of her SO flying through the air and crumpling on the ground to vivid and sharp, coloured with guilt and shame. Holding back with her powers seems to be transferring to her fists. 

May is on her before she has time to reflect on her words, and less than a minute later she hits the gym floor hard again, gasping for breath.   


“Get up” May barks, and she pushes herself to her feet, raising her fists. May gives her a look that communicates clearly what she wants, and attacks again, and a minute later she’s on the mat again, panting. May usually holds back a least a bit, but she’s not holding back now. 

“Up.”

It’s clearly going to be one of those training sessions. Daisy can’t help her groan “Break?” she asks hopefully.

“Soon as you stop holding back.” is her SO’s blunt response. 

Daisy sighs as she pushes herself to her feet. Fists up. Another blur of punches, ducks and kicks and she’s on the mat again.

“Up” 

“That’s enough”

Natasha is suddenly on the mat with them, having somehow crossed the gym without Daisy noticing, and is exuding a quite air of threat as she faces May. 

“It’s fine” she says just as May snaps “Stay out of this.”

Natasha doesn’t back down “She’s had enough”

May doesn’t give an inch “I’ve seen you train rookies  _ Agent Romanoff _ , you can’t complain about this, and Daisy’s no rookie.”

Daisy pushes off the floor into a standing position just in time to see Natasha look momentarily completely thrown.

“Natasha, it’s fine. I’m fine” she says, feeling her cheeks burn as her mother faces off with her, her _something_. Then May glances at her and a smirk Daisy _really doesn’t like_ spreads across her face. 

“Actually, why don’t you train her for a while Agent Romanoff? You’ve gotten plenty of younger agents field-ready before.” her voice deepened on field-ready, pointing out sharply that the skills Daisy learned here would keep her alive in the field. “And Daisy, if you’re worried about hurting me why don’t you spar with the Black Widow?”

Yeah, Daisy knew that smirk was bad news. “No, no I’m good” she said hastily “No more holding back. Got it.”

But May was already stepping away, unheeding her desperate “ _ Maaay _ ”

Natasha looked between May and her daughter for a moment, before she dropped into a fighting stance, indicating her grudging agreement that she really shouldn’t have jumped into someone else’s training session. Damn May. She turned to face Daisy, her Pauchok's face wary and edged with panic as she tracked her movements.

“I won’t hurt you” she promised “and you won’t hurt me.”

For an instant Daisy just looked more panicked, then she took a deep breath and settled into her own stance, a nervous, fragile trust settling over her face. “Ok”

Natasha attacked first, pretty sure that Daisy was too nervous to do it herself. Daisy ducked, striking back quickly and it was instantly obvious that May had been right, Daisy had been holding back. Not that she landed the blow obviously. Nat grabbed her arm and used it to yank her in, hitting her lightly on the side as Daisy turned into her chest, bending her knees and grabbing her shoulders to flip Natasha over her head. Nat let her do it, but landed confidently on her feet, knees bent to absorb the force and already spinning to face her opponent, blocking two quick kicks and grabbing her shoulders to flip her through the air. 

Except instead of landing on her back like Nat had expected Daisy shoved her hands downwards and some strange distortion poured into the air beneath her, lifting her higher up and giving her a moment to twist so she landed on her feet. Behind Natasha.

The next blast of distortion was aimed at her opponent, hitting the back of her knees while she was still turning and sending her crashing to the ground. Nat didn’t miss a beat, rolling into it and sweeping Daisy’s legs from under her from her position on the ground, neither noticing May’s victorious smile as Natasha turned the fight into the close quarters wrestling she liked best. In moments she had Daisy’s hands pinned together, correctly guessing the inhuman needed to point her hands to direct her power. Pinning the rest of Daisy was short work after that. 

“You ok?” she asked from on top of her daughter, unable to keep the slight concern from creeping through her voice. 

“Yeah” Daisy said, sounding rather surprised about that fact. 

“I said I wouldn’t hurt you.” she reminded the agent. “Nice shot at my knees. Follow it through next time.”

“Copy that.” Daisy said with a grin, accepting the hand up Nat offered her, and not insulting the Avenger by asking if she was ok in return. 

May joined them on the mat again, eyeing them both smugly before addressing her rookie “Did you lose control?”

“No” admitted Daisy

May just nodded “Now go properly with your power. You’ve got a lot more than that.” she finished, raising her fists and indicating she was taking over again. Natasha retreated off the mat to watch, surprised to find herself disappointed. She wanted to teach her daughter to fight. 

Daisy hesitated “Last time I went all out with my powers with you it didn’t end so well.” 

May just gave her an unimpressed look “That’s why we train on mats and not stone floors. Lets go.”

“Good point” Daisy admitted, and they started. 

\------------

An hour later and Daisy made her way tiredly to the showers. She was a lot more well matched, even possibly had a slight (very slight) edge, against May when using her powers, even not going full out (she wasn’t blasting May into the wall, no matter how much her SO said not to hold back and could quite possibly just walk away from it.). That did not mean however that the training was any less exhausting, and she was soaked in sweat. She switched the shower on and stepped in before it could warm up, relishing the cool water on her hot skin and enjoying the way it warmed before she could start to shiver. The gym showers somehow had the perfect speed of warming up, and Daisy unashamedly loved it. 

May was waiting for her by her locker when she came out, handing her a fresh towel for her hair as she brushed her own. Daisy dumped her shower bag back in the locker and accepted the towel, her T-shirt already damp from her hair.

“I should cut my hair shorter” she said idly “it might get in the way less.”

“Wouldn’t count on it.” May replied “short hair is harder to tie back.” 

That was true, but Daisy kind of fancied a change anyway so she just shrugged.

“You did well today.” May said, and Daisy smiled at the praise. 

“Sorry for holding back” she said “I should have trusted you.”

May shrugged “You needed time.”

She finished brushing her hair and pulled it back quickly, and headed for the door. Throwing “Make sure you learn your cover before lunch.” behind her.

“Wait, May?” Daisy called 

May turned back round, raising an eyebrow in question.

“Does this, does this change anything? B-between us I mean?” she asked, and she couldn’t stop the vulnerability leaking into her voice. 

May didn’t ask what  _ this _ meant. They both knew. “This changes  _ nothing _ .” she said firmly, “Even if you want it to.” and Daisy knew with a rush of relief that she meant it. 

“I don’t” she said, and relief flickered around the edges of May’s non-expression. 

“Then go learn your cover ‘Annie’” May said, but warmth tinged her voice, and they both understood what had just been said. 

Behind the door, about to come for her own shower, Natasha faded into the shadows of the gym corner before May could realise she’d heard. Something she  _ refused _ to accept was jealously felt tight in her chest. 

She understood too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Nat. I love how May and Coulson are kind of Daisy's parents in canon though so I'm keeping it in the story and mixing it in with Nat and Daisy's journey.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! Sorry for the break, slightly longer update than normal to make up for it though. I am now done with travelling and back with a reliable internet connection. Updates may be slower for a while though, because I have a lot to sort out, not much more pre-written and jetlag....

After lunch, a cheerfully chaotic affair as most of the agents on base ducked in and out of the kitchen for an hour, some staying and others going back to whatever they’d been doing, her Pauchok disappeared back down to the Cocoon where she wasn’t allowed to follow.

Clint's hand was warm in hers as he squeezed, offering silent comfort as she had to watch her daughter vanish again. 

She wanted all at once to chase after Daisy and cling to her, and to run far, far away from the Playground where the crushing feeling in her chest might possibly go away.

“You ok?” Clint thumb tapped against her hand, the morse code almost unnoticeable with others in the room. 

“I’m compromised” she taps back. _No_ she means. 

Clint’s hand tightens in hers – no code, just warmth, and she understands the message.  _ It’s going to be ok _ . But the panicky feeling in her stomach doesn’t believe her partner. 

She doesn’t know how to do compromised. Not like this.

Clint is bad enough, the partner who made a different call, and who stuck by her in the messy aftermath, and in the years that followed. Clint, who Natasha knew better than her own heartbeat and who had fought beside her a thousand times. Clint who she could trust to never miss and who somehow always stumbled out of missions alive at her side. Clint was bad enough and he came with a calm blond wife and two noisy fragile young kids that compromised her in ways which still made her feel shaky sometimes, even tucked away in a safe little farm practically no-one knew about. The Barton’s were bad enough, but this, this was something different. 

This was a little baby she’d given birth to and loved with every fibre of her brainwashed being. A little baby she’d lost to death and mourned with vodka and suicide missions that Clint had screamed himself hoarse at her about. A little baby she’d entered into her ledger and never quite let go of. A little baby who was somehow now alive and grown up and heading a team of powered humans. Who looked out at her with soft brown eyes that begged for love and refused to ask for it and reflected so much of Natasha back at her. Who had May and Coulson and would probably be better off without the Black Widow around to fuck it all up again.

She should go. She should go for so many reasons.

She should go because she’s compromised. She should go because Daisy could be targetted because of her. She should go because Daisy didn’t need her and maybe didn’t want her. She should go because she’s an Avenger and she should be heading back to her team. She should go because she isn’t remotely prepared for this – they expected to find Coulson alive, she did not expect to find Daisy. She should go because she’s compromised. She’s too compromised. 

She’s too compromised and she doesn’t know what to do about it.

“Agent Romanoff, Agent Barton, do you have a minute?”

Coulson has phrased it as a request but Nat knows from experience that its not, not when ‘Agent’ and their surnames are called. Clint shrugs, and she replies ‘sure’ anyway, and they follow him upstairs to his office. It’s a nice base they have, small and tucked away she notes as they walk. Better in a lot of ways than the Triskelion and the Hub and the other old SHIELD HQs. Better in some ways than Avengers Tower. 

“What are your plans?” Coulson asks when they’ve done brief pleasantries about tea or coffee which none of them wanted. 

Natasha blinked, the only indication of surprise she will give, and then felt panic unfurl in her stomach. She had no idea what their plans were. She’d had a plan when she’d arrived here. A plan and a plan B and a backup for that and a backup for that backup. Every single one of them had been blown to tiny pieces when she’d seen her daughters face and  _ known _ somewhere deep in her gut who this agent was. 

“Uh” said Clint, and she feels relieved for a moment that she’s not the only one lost. And then Clint looks to her expectantly, and she realises that Clint expected _her_ to know what the plan is, and the relief falls away. The pause lengthens painfully. 

Coulson tries again after a while “You’re both welcome to stay for a while, but it would be useful to know how long, and to know you’ve told your team you won’t be around.”

Clint looks at Coulson, then back at her, and his face flickers over a question. She lets her own reveal her blankness back.

“We shouldn’t both stay” he signs “The Avengers need a decent spy to call on without full Assemble.”

“You have a family to go back to”

“They can manage without me for a bit.”

“They need you around when you don’t have a mission”

“Daisy needs to get to know her mother.” Clint signs back, an edge of irritation to his movements now. An edge that says he _knows_ Nat’s shit and he’s not gonna let her get away with it. 

But ‘ _ Does this change anything’ _ Daisy had asked. 

Coulson was staring out the window patiently as they signed, but Nat found she had an answer “We’re heading back tonight” she said, and two heads snap to face her.

“ _ **What?**_ ” Clint and Coulson snap at the same time. 

“We’ll tell the Steve, Tony, Bruce and Thor you’re alive, they deserve to know, but we’ll make sure it doesn’t go any further .”

Clint gives her a look that somehow proclaims that this is beyond stupid even for her. Coulson is more vocal.

“You’re not leaving.”

“ _Excuse me_?” she says, letting the black widow slide to the forefront, letting her take over and shoving Natasha away somewhere safer. Threat drips from her voice and radiates from her posture. 

“You’re not leaving.” Coulson repeats as if she didn’t say anything, as if she isn’t threatening serious injury “Daisy needs her mother.”

‘ _This changes nothing.’_ May had said ‘ _Even if you want it to_.’

‘ _I don’t.’_ Daisy had said. 

“Daisy doesn’t need me.” 

Coulson stands up from his perch on the side of his desk and walks towards them. Clint shifts next to her, a partner ready for anything, even defending her from a man who is the closest thing he had to a father. Natasha doesn’t twitch, doesn’t give an inch.

“Look at me” Coulson orders, as if he was still their handler, and there is steel in his voice. 

Natasha looks up because she wants to, no other reason, but when she meets his eyes she finds herself caught in the anger in them. She can count on one hand the times she’s seen Coulson truly angry at her. She wouldn’t even need all her fingers. 

“Do you know how many times Daisy has been abandoned and let down in her life? Do you know how long Daisy spent searching for her birth parents? How devastated she was when her birth father betrayed her? She cried for weeks. So you are not leaving. You are not running away Romanoff. I don’t care if you’re afraid, you’re sticking it out and you’re going to work it out because Daisy has been rejected enough times in her life. Is that clear Agent Romanoff?”

There was a deadly silence. The kind of silence that can cut through hard steel. The kind of silence that burned like salt in the cuts Coulson’s words had sliced into Natasha’s chest.

“Nat.” Clint said “Nat you can do this.” and it undoes her even more than Coulson’s lecture because Clint doesn’t point out she wants desperately to stay, he doesn’t point out she’ll never forgive herself if she leaves, he doesn’t point out that they all know this is a gut-instinct. He doesn’t point out that it will destroy her to leave. He doesn’t point any of that out because it doesn’t need pointing out. 

“I” she says “I’m compromised” _I’m scared,_ she means, _I don’t know what to do_. 

Clint understands. “You’ve been compromised before”  _ We worked it out with Cooper and Lila. _

She sucks in a breath, tries to make plans around the tightness in her chest “I have to answer calls to Assemble.”

Coulson nodded “You can answer them from here?” he checks

“We’re usually a little scattered anyway” she replied. Clint is silent next to her now, letting her work it out. 

“And when there isn’t an Avenger’s level emergency?” Coulson asks

“The Playgrounds a good base.” she said “I could do a few missions for you in return for a bunk.”

Coulson’s surprise is both gratifying and insulting. He expected her to stay for a few more days, maybe a week, drop in sometimes to see Daisy. He hadn’t expected her to offer to move.

But Coulson’s more right than he can know. So is Clint. She’s missed 26 years of Daisy’s life. She wants to know her now. She’s the Black Widow. She doesn’t run away scared. Even if she is (and she’s not admitting that. Ever. To anyone.). She’s the Black Widow and she’s taken down a hostile base with a single gun, three bullets and her wits. She’s the Black Widow and she’s dealt with plane crashes, hurricanes, gunshot wounds, brainwashing, nuclear bombs, child soldiers and countless other things that would send even most SHIELD agents running. She was the Black Widow and she could do this. Even if it didn’t work like that. Even if this is something completely and terrifyingly new. Even if she simultaneously want ed to follow her Pauchok around like a drowning man follows a boat and at the same time run as far away as a quinjet and her legs could get her. 

“Welcome back to SHIELD then Agent Romanoff. Barton?”

Clint hesitated, but they both knew they couldn’t both stay, one of them needed to keep a more active eye on various things round the world “I’ll stay a couple more days, drop by when I’m in the area.”

Coulson sighed “Shame, I would have liked you both back”

“I’m still an Avenger. I’ll still need to go out to follow up on intel. Even without a call to Assemble.” Natasha pointed out. 

Coulson looked at her “Not for a few weeks” he said.

“Not for a few weeks.” she confirmed. 

She can do this. She’s the Black Widow. She’s dealt with dirty bombs and chita u ri and Stark on a bad day, she can stay put for a few weeks. 

She’s so screwed.

\-------------

Daisy sat strapped into her seat in the quinjet, trying not to wrinkle her evening dress too much laughing at Coulson’s dad jokes. She loved missions like this. This was the fourth mission that she, Coulson and May had gone in as a family unit, and she doesn’t think she’s the only one who enjoys them for reasons completely unconnected to gathering intel.

She highly doubts that enjoyment is the reason (or at least, not the main reason) they have used this set-up so many times; the cover has been highly successful in the past and couples coming in with a child -even grown up - are much more convincing. It is however, she’s pretty sure, the reason why they always get ice-cream afterwards. And its the reason Daisy feels like smiling ear to ear, even though on paper the mission is a routine intel gathering op. They’re searching the house. That’s it. 

Except being introduced as someone’s daughter, even though she knows intellectually that its not real, is not just a routine mission. It’s something. It’s hearing her ‘parents’ make small talk like its completely normal, its texting on her phone (hacking the security but whatever) like she’s a normal teenager dragged along to her parents parties, its pretending she minds when her ‘dad’ confiscates her phone (now able to unlock all the doors), its letting her ‘m o m’ pull her onto the dance floor and teasingly teach her how to dance (Daisy was terrible at proper ballroom style dancing) while they eavesdropped on fellow guests, it was going to ‘lets find somewhere quieter for a bit’ walks with her ‘dad’ that led into darkened studies that they search quickly and quietly. It was the time one of the other younger guests started flirting drunkenly with her and her ‘dad’ was suddenly there with a menace that wasn’t  _ entirely _ ‘John Elcards’ as he casually asked her if she thought she could convince ‘mom’ to let him sneak away for a weekends hunting, because ‘I do so miss firing my guns’.

It was something and several hours later Daisy was still thoroughly enjoying semi-pretending to be her superiors daughter (even though they are hidden in a sub-basement far from the guests and staff they are meant to be convincing) when it all went to hell. It turned out that they were not the only guests who were more than they seemed. Unfortunately, it turned out the other not-what-they-seemed guests were Hydra, and here to pick up the weapons stashed in the vault they just broke into.

It’s difficult to tell which group, the one packing weapons into boxes or the one that just broke in based on a few words of intel, is more surprised. They recover first though, icing three Hydra agents before having to take shelter, and in the ten minute fire-and-fist fight that follows May knocks out seven hydra, Daisy sends three agents flying into the wall and then sends pulses of vibrations all around the vault, shaking apart any guns she finds, but not before Coulson takes a bullet to the shoulder and an alarm starts shrieking loudly. The mission doesn’t get much better from there. 

While May puts pressure on Coulson’s shoulder Daisy sends an anonymous message to local police about an illegal gun trafficking exchange happening  _ right now _ and adding in the address. Its not much but its better than nothing and they are seriously outnumbered and they need to get out of there. All their clothes are torn or muddy and Coulson’s suit isn’t dark enough to hide the spreading bloodstain so there is little chance they can rejoin the guests and wait this one out, which leaves hiding until Coulson bleeds out or fighting their way out. They went for fighting their way out. 

Half an hour later they are driving as fast as they can back to the quinjet, Coulson starting to turn dangerously pale and Daisy’s nursing a cut along her hip where a bullet grazed her and what are probably at least fractured ribs from half falling-half rolling down a flight of stairs. If May is injured she isn’t showing it, speeding through the country roads back to where they left the quinjet. Daisy pressed the wad of fabric harder against Coulson’s shoulder and tried to ignore the knot of terror in her gut. He was going to be fine. He’d had bullet wounds before. He was going to be fine. He was. He was. 

There was too much blood. 

Daisy wasn’t a doctor, but she knew there was too much blood. Daisy wasn’t a doctor but she knew Coulson was too quiet. Daisy wasn’t a doctor but she knew May was driving too fast for it to be just a minor wound.

She had her phone in her hand before she even realised she’d made a decision, her left hand still pressing the cloth tightly to Coulson’s wound as her right hand pulled her phone out of her back pocket.

_ Tell S 2 send J to quin3. DC shot. _

It isn’t technically a field mission she justifies to herself - at a stretch, you could call the quinjet an extension of the base, so it isn’t  _ really _ calling an uncleared trainee agent onto the field. 

Daisy isn’t sure she would care even if it was, not with Coulson’s eyes drifting closed and his face that sickly shade of grey.

May barely slows as she drives the car up the quinjet’s ramp and parks it sharply. Her eyes flick over Jeni, standing waiting with a medical kit and sterilised sheet laid out over the seats at the side of the cabin. May flings her a look that promises they’ll be having words about the uncleared caterpillar later, but relief tinges the frown.

“Wheels up in two” she states, heading for the cockpit as Jeni gently helps Daisy get Coulson out of the back seat and onto the makeshift bed. 

Daisy stumbles back when Jeni waves her off, asking and answering quick questions addressed at what was probably Simmons on the other end of her comm. Which was probably Lincoln’s comm as only cleared agents were assigned a comm. Not that that was in any way important just then.

Jeni cut open Coulson’s suit, her hands shaking as she followed instructions Daisy couldn’t hear to remove the bullet and clean the wound. She felt sick. Coulson was just lying there, unconscious now. Jeni wasn’t even a doctor. She’d been a teacher before terrigenisis. She’d only had a month studying with Simmons and online courses to become a field medic. She’d never done anything like this before, anything to this scale. Simmons had only just cleared her to start practising on patients on base. She should have told Sophie to send Simmons too, to hell with building up strength and distance with her portals slowly. She should have...

Coulson coughed, and groaned “I forgot how much getting shot sucked.”

“Coulson” Daisy choked, her voice rough with suppressed fear. 

“Hey, it’s ok” Coulson protested “We can get ice-cream another time.” and Daisy gave a hiccuping splutter of laughter and started to sob.

\---------------------

Natasha was sitting in the Playground communal area with her laptop, checking in with various of her contacts around the world when loud swearing coming from the control room followed by Agent Morse’s quieter “Thats not helping Hunter. Shut up and help me find them a new exit route.” alerts her and Clint that something has gone wrong. 

Without communicating Clint jumps soundlessly up from the sofa and heads for the control room, and Natasha pads silently behind, trying not to think about the images the phrase ‘exit route’ shows her of her daughter. No need to panic before she knows what's going on. And no need to panic afterwards. She’s the Black Widow dammit. She doesn’t panic.

Fitz and a couple of lower level agents are hovering around a collection of computers when they enter, floor plans showing on screens as Bobbi barks instructions down her comm. Natasha feels her stomach twist listening to the sounds coming from what must be May, Coulson and her Daisy’s comms.

She’s always hated being in the control room when missions go wrong, especially if someone she knows is on the mission. She hates the feeling of helplessness. When her own missions go wrong, as they frequently do with the kind of missions she goes on, she falls back on a backup plan, or if those are destroyed too, she improvises. She works it out and she comes out alive (if a little worse for the wear). She works out what to do next and she does it. 

She can’t do that when its not her mission. She can’t do that when she’s hundreds of miles away in an underground base rather than in that country house with her former handler, her friend and her  _ daughter _ . Clint is tense beside her as they both scan the floor plan, and then he’s adding quick terse suggestions to Agent Morse as Natasha kicks one of the low level agents off a computer (the agent takes one look at her glower and backs away whimpering) and starts hacking the house, hoping to at least get a visual to accompany the audio from the comms. 

She’s still trying to get in twenty minutes later when the agents make it out of the house and grounds and manage to lose their tales on the way back to the quinjet and she abandons the attempt (she’s pretty sure she wasn’t going to get anywhere anyway, she knows a closed-loop system when she sees one) in favour of listening more closely to the comms.

Coulson’s been shot. That much is clear from Daisy’s frantic demands for him to stay awake and May’s terse orders to keep pressure on his shoulder. Clint paces angrily behind her as Natasha stays next to the computer, knowing her body is tenser than her partner’s bowstring and feeling ashamed at the trickle of relief running through her body that it isn’t Daisy whose been shot. 

She loves Coulson, he was her handler for years, his death had hurt her and Clint, bad. But at least it wasn’t Daisy. And Coulson would be fine. He’d had worse. He’d had a lot worse.

“She’s barely had a months medical training! You can’t send her in alone!”

Nat turns to the door at the same time as Clint does as the other little scientist, Simmons runs passed, arguing with a sandy haired man Nat hasn’t seem before. Without speaking, they leave the control room to follow. 

“Sophie can’t send two people that far. Daisy said Jeni.”

“She’s not a doctor!”

“She’s got my comm.”

“I can’t just talk her through surgery like its making toast!”

“Look, Daisy said to send Jeni, so I’m sending Jeni, are you going to help or not?”

“She’s not even cleared for the field! Coulson hasn’t approved...”

“Daisy’s our leader. Not Coulson. Are you helping or not?” _Interesting_ Natasha noted as the pair (still oblivious to their tails) were joined by Daisy’s partner Mack, who listened to the simultaneous explanations of both agents with a calm expression before making a decision.

“Jemma do it, Lincoln, we’ll talk about this later...” which was universal superior agent for ‘I’ll yell at you for this when we’re not in a crisis’. 

The young scientists face was still pinched with concern but she nodded and that seemed to be that.

\---------------

Natasha was waiting in the hanger ten minutes before the quinjet landed, Clint at her side, wanting to see Coulson for themselves. They had listened to Simmons give step by step instructions to what Strike Team Delta gathered was an inhuman with healing abilities through her comm, and gathered from Simmons side of the conversation that Coulson was fine now but she wouldn’t really accept that before she saw it with her own eyes. 

Clint almost ran to Coulson when the quinjet finally landed and Coulson emerged, followed by a tired looking woman with ginger hair and a muddy but smiling Daisy. May stalked down the ramp after them, a bruise darkening on her jaw that only made the agent look more dangerous.

Coulson nodded to them in greeting, his eyes catching on Clint’s face “I’ll be in my office if you want to have coffee” he offered, a reference to years gone by when he and Clint and sometimes Nat would sit in his office for hours after a mission gone wrong, reassuring themselves that they were all in one piece. It’s a reassurance Nat knows Clint needs right now.

May sends the director an irritated look, but doesn’t bother fighting about it. “Jeni go get some rest. Daisy, take yourself to medical.”

“I’ll be fine in the morning” Daisy protested.

“Medical. Now.”

“Copy that.” Daisy sulked, and Nat followed her through the hanger doors and down into the main base. Her Pauchok smiled in surprise as she fell into step next to her, but didn’t speak, just turned the corner and walked confidently if tiredly through the base.

“This isn’t the way to medical.” she observed neutrally

“It is the way to the kitchen though” Daisy said, a cheeky grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. 

Natasha raised an eyebrow, wondering if this was the point where she acted like a responsible adult.

Daisy squirmed a little “Food’s more important?” she tried.

“You sound like Clint” she said, amused. “Go get yourself stitched up.”

Daisy pouted at her, and didn’t change directions “But food  _ is _ more important for me.”

Natasha was not being affected by manipulation as basic as  _ pouting _ . She was  _ not. _ “How do you figure that?”

“I’m inhuman” Daisy replied simply as they arrived at the kitchen. “Elena! What are you doing up here?”

Natasha turned to look at the other occupant of the room, a darked haired, tough looking woman stirring something at the cooker.

“Ben almost cry when I try to heat up soup from a can” the woman said, her accent and slightly off speech indicating she hadn’t been living in the US for long. 

Daisy laughed (although it held an edge of pain that worried Nat) and grabbed a loaf of bread and started matter-of-factly cutting the entire loaf up. 

“Jeni heal Coulson ok?” Elena asked 

“Mostly” Daisy replied “She ran out of power towards the end, too big a jump from what she’s done before. But the rest will heal in a day or so.” Half the sandwich toppings in the fridge joined the bread on the counter. 

“She gone back to Cocoon?” 

“Yeah, Ben’s probably force-feeding her and Sophie already.” Daisy said, her tone tinged with amusement. Then she winced and pulled her comm out of her ear, switching it off. “Help me make enough sandwiches before May tracks me down and drags me to medical?” she asked hopefully. 

“Why don’t you want go to medical?” 

Daisy made a face “I don’t like hospitals.” she said

“Your leg is bleeding” Elena observed 

Daisy shrugged “I’ve been stitching myself up since I was a kid. Please?”

Elena huffed, and gestured Daisy out of the way, and then she sort of twitched and Natasha had to hold back a gasp of surprise because where there had been a pile of bread and random fillings there was now three neat stacks of sandwiches. Another twitch and those sandwiches were boxed up in two plastic tubs. Elena took a box of cereal bars out of a drawer at normal speed as Natasha resisted reaching for her gun, calculating who was likely to win in a fight between the two of them and trying to remember the woman wasn’t a n enemy . 

Elena held the bag out to Daisy just as May’s voice echoed down the corridor “ _ Daisy!” _

“Who is your friend?”

“Oh, this is Natasha Romanoff, Natasha, this is Elena Rodriguez, one of the caterpillar team. Uh, I’d better go.” 

Natasha raised an amused hand in greeting to the stunned woman who clearly recognised the name and followed her Pauchok as she rabbited out a different door to the one they’d come in through.

“We should go to my bunk” she offered, catching up effortlessly “May will look for you in yours.”

Daisy looked at her in surprise “I need the first-aid kit from mine.”

“I’ve got one in my bag.”

“Oh, thanks then.”

They fell into silence as they walked quickly towards the bunks, until Daisy broke it.

“Thanks for not making me go to medical.”

Nat shrugged “Why don’t you like medical?”

“Bad memories” Daisy said, dodging the question. 

“No-one has good memories of medical,” Nat pointed out “most people go anyway.”

“Do you?” 

Point. “I let Bruce patch me up sometimes.” she says.

“So no then?”

“No” she admits as they arrive at her bunk. 

She still hasn’t actually slept in the room, having slept with Clint last night, but her bag is here, with the first-aid kit in it, so she supposes it’s her bunk.

“Sit” she says gesturing to the bed as she digs the first-aid kit out. Like most SHIELD first aid kits its less of a plasters-and-gauze kit and more of an emergency medical pack, and she extracts antiseptic and needle and thread as Daisy does as she’s told. 

Natasha eyes the sluggishly bleeding cut on her daughters leg and tries to remember that if this were any other agent she wouldn’t be blinking at the injury. “You’re gonna need to take the tights off.” she points out, heading into the attached bathroom to get a bowl of water. 

Daisy has stripped the article of clothing off and tied her dress around her waist when she gets back, abandoning the bed in favour of stretching her leg out on the floor, examining the cut. Natasha puts the bowl of water down and dipped a cloth into it, wringing it out until it stopped dripping and expertly starting to clean the cut. 

“I can do that” Daisy says, a hand reaching to take the cloth.

“You can. But you’re not going to.” Nat says, pushing the hand away. 

“But...” Daisy starts and Nat sends her an unimpressed look. 

“It’s me or medical” she states. 

Daisy pouts.

Natasha raises an eyebrow at her “You really think that’s gonna work on me?”

“It was worth a try” Daisy said, her grin cheeky, but she piped down and let Natasha finish cleaning the blood away, and then clean the wound with a mix of antiseptic and anaesthetic, followed by quick, neat stitches. 

“Let me see your ribs” she says when she’s done bandaging the result. 

“They’re fine.” Daisy says quickly. Too quickly and Nat raises the eyebrow again, trying to look stern. It seems to be pretty effective because Daisy flushed and dropped her eyes to the floor, untying the dress from her waist and stripping it off completely, leaving herself in just a thin vest and underwear. 

Nat seemed to accept it as good enough (which was good, because Daisy was so not discussing the bullet scars on her stomach tonight), and ran her fingers gently over her ribs, feeling for anything obvious before she starts pressing gently from the top down, trying to be gentle as Daisy whimpers with pain.

“You’ve got at least one broken rib and a couple of fractured ones” she said finally. “I’ll wrap them up for you but you need to go easy for a few days ok?”

Daisy started to shrug, then winced and aborted the movement “I’ll be fine by morning” she said instead.

“No you won’t. Your ribs will take at least a week to heal, longer if you don’t look after yourself.” she warned, as she wraps bandaging carefully around her ribs, surprised to find her voice is stern. 

Daisy squirms reflexively but says defensively “I will be! I’ll eat enough for three people, sleep for eight hours and wake up totally fine. It’s an inhuman thing. Or” she frowns “maybe a me thing. Might be something about my Dad’s genes. We’re not really sure how much inhuman powers get passed on, but Lincoln says not all inhumans heal this quickly.”

“You’d better eat then.” Natasha says “I’ll get you some pyjamas from your bunk” 

“May’s probably given up by now.” Daisy says, and Natasha feels her heart fall. “I can stop bothering you.”

Oh. “You’re not.” she says firmly “Stay here.” and she knows she read Daisy right when the girl relaxes happily. 

She slips down the hall and into Daisy’s bunk, searching the drawers quickly before she finds some fleece pyjamas made to look like the supergirl costume (sans skirt). Lips twitching, she gathered them and some toiletries and returned to her own bunk. Daisy, still on the floor, groaned with embarrassment at the sight of the pyjamas. 

“Coulson got those for me as a joke when he made me head of the ‘super-power’ team” she muttered defensively, cheeks staining red but still looking kind of fond. 

“I think they’re cute.” Natasha said, her voice teasing and Daisy ducked her head, not quite hiding the soft, vulnerable look on her face. 

“It could have been worse” Daisy admits, voice a little rough. ‘ _That girl is so desperate for you to love her she’s scared to want it_.’ Clint had said. 

“How so?” she asks, trying to keep things light.

“FitzSimmons and Hunter between them managed to get hold of and give me over a dozen copies of ‘The very hungry caterpillar’” 

Nat chuckled, the sound warming the small bunk and sparking off Daisy’s own laughter, which tapered off into a wince.

Natasha felt her own amusement die instantly, and crossed the room to pile pillows against the headboard of the bed.

“Come on, off the floor” she said.

“I’ll get crumbs on your bed” Daisy protested nervously 

“Don’t care. You’re not sitting on the floor with broken ribs.” she says, helping Daisy off the floor, and reaching for the pyjamas while she was up. 

“You’ll get cold” is all she says, helping Daisy into them and then guiding her onto the bed, tucking the blanket over her legs before handing her the second box of sandwiches (Natasha wasn’t sure if she should be impressed or worried at the speed Daisy had gone through the first box). 

“Stop fussing, I’m fine” Daisy said, voice amused when Natasha went as far as to take the box back to open it for her. 

“I’m _not_ fussing!!” she splutters because the Black Widow most certainly does not fuss over people. Daisy shouldn’t be straining her sore ribs, that’s all. She is _not_ fussing. 

“Riiiiight” 

Natasha glared “Eat your supper.”

A slight smirk “Are you telling me to eat my greens?”

Natasha took a moment to be intensely glad that Clint was safely tucked away making sure Coulson was ok. “Finish your sandwiches Pauchok.” and if her voice is more soft than scolding, well, it’s been a long evening.

A wider smirk “Do I get sent to the corner if I don’t?”

Natasha gives her a glare that has sent SHIELD recruits running for cover and Daisy gives an undignified little ‘eep’ and shoves a sandwich in her mouth almost whole.

“Chew” she reminds her daughter, and she is not fussing thank you very much. 

But as she watches her daughter eat, getting surprisingly few crumbs on the blanket, she can’t help the ache in her chest at the banter. She wonders what it would have been like if she’d been normal. If there had been no red-room or even if she’d have gone rogue from the KGB when she found out she was pregnant. What it would have been like if by some miracle they could have had a normal life, her and Daisy. Would she have been the kind of parent to tell her little girl to eat her greens? Would she have sent a pouty child to a corner or her room a hundred times over the years? Tucked her into bed when she was ill, made her chicken soup? Could have beens ached in her chest and she mentally shook herself. Looking back did no good. She couldn’t change the past. Still, she had to swallow a lump in her throat as Daisy finally slowed down eating and yawned widely, clearly fighting to keep her eyes open.

“You should get some sleep.” she says, reaching out to take the box, only two sandwiches of at least a dozen remaining. 

Daisy didn’t argue, wriggling down under the covers and sleepily pulling the pillow flat. “A-are you staying?”

“Would you like me to?”

“I-I wouldn’t mind.” Daisy said, her voice more vulnerable than Natasha had ever heard it. 

“I’m not going anywhere Pauchok.” she said “I’ll be right here.”

“okay” Daisy murmured, already dropping off, and Natasha felt her breath catch at the show of trust. 

How had it been less than two days since that life-changing moment in Coulson’s office? How could Daisy so easily trust the Black Widow not to murder her in her sleep, let alone ask her (albeit not obviously) to stay.

But just like that morning Daisy is so peaceful in sleep, even with her breaths more laboured than before. Messy brown hair tangled around her neck and shoulders, one hand hugging the blanket to her chest, body limp in sleep.

Nat is so beyond compromised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Natasha Romanoff - definitely not fussing. Not at aaaaaall.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've finally worked out how to make my italics appear!!! I've re-posted the first 5 chapters with italics, but nothing has been changed, and there will be italics from here on! 
> 
> Also, there are mentions of past child abuse at the beginning of this chapter, so if that might trigger you or you don't want to read it for any reason, it's not important to the story and I've marked where to start reading again.

Natasha wakes up just past 7am, despite having only dropped off around 3am, almost an hour after Daisy. Decades of training and survival skills instantly pinpoint why she woke up and she turns to Daisy, whimpering on the bed. A sheen of sweat covers her face, and her once-limp muscles are tight, hand clenched around the blanket as another tiny whimper slips past her lips.

Natasha unfolds silently from the chair she slept in, ignoring the twinges of her muscles as she sits on the edge of the bed.

“Wake up Pauchok.” she whispers gently “You’re having a nightmare.”

Daisy stirs a little, and her next whimper is louder, lower lip tucking into her mouth as she bit down reflexively.

“Daisy, wake up. It’s just a dream, wake up.”

Daisy’s eyes flickered open briefly, then snap open, fastened on her form as Daisy flings herself away and into the wall.

“ _No! Please! I’ll be good!”_

Natasha feels something in her stomach freeze to ice at the words, and her voice is rougher than she’d like when she next spoke “Hey, it’s ok, it’s ok, it’s just me. It’s ok.”

In the space between one moment and the next Daisy is huddled against the wall, knees and elbows drawn up to protect her chest and face, blanket tangled around her.  _ “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” _ she whimpered, voice shaky with tears.

Natasha feels her throat go tight with her own tears, but shoved them aside “Shh, it’s just me Pauchok. No one’s gonna hurt you. You’re safe Pauchok, I promise. I won’t let anyone hurt you. Its ok Daisy, it’s ok.”

She keeps up a steady murmur of words, not quite knowing or caring what she’s saying, knowing her tone is more important than the words and hoping its enough. Cooper and Lila have had nightmares of course. She’s hugged Lila back to sleep a couple of times. But not like this. Lila dreams of monsters under the bed and falling through dark spaces. She doesn’t dream of flashbacks and people hurting her, and this is clearly that. Clint’s had these dreams before, but he wakes up with eyes dark and furious, instantly aware and goes off to shoot things. Nat knows how to deal with Clint. Wake him up and then don’t stand in the way. Offer to spar if he wants and don’t look even sympathetic. She doesn’t know how to deal with this. 

“N-natas-sha?” Daisy whispers eyes calming, fixed on her face. 

“Hey Pauchok” she says. 

“Did I wake you?” Daisy asks, more aware by the moment, knees and elbows relaxing against the bed again.

Natasha shrugged “I don’t mind.”

Daisy awkwardly untangled herself from the cover, leaning back against the wall, face heating “This doesn’t usually happen” she said, tone defensive.

Nat wriggles back on the bed, leaning against the wall and opening her arms in a silent offer. Daisy hesitates for a moment, her face vulnerable in the dim light trickling under the bunk door, before she moves closer, letting Nat wrap her arms around her and burrowing into the hug. She’s a warm weight against her side and chest, no longer crying but still shaking and Nat cuddles her close.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks, because that’s what she asks Lila, even if Daisy is more walled in and far less trusting than little Lila.

But somehow the dream, or the darkness of the early morning seems to be leaving Daisy bare and open because she replies, shakily “I dreamed about one of my foster dad’s.”

“Hmmm?” Nat murmurs softly, suddenly realising that she’s not sure she wants to hear this, and knowing she has to anyway. 

“He, he used to come back drunk sometimes, and if we wound him up he’d smack us around a bit.” Daisy sniffled, words half-lost in Nat’s shoulder but still distinguishable to her sharp ears. “He caught me in the ribs really hard this one time, and it hurt so bad and I was thought it would never stop.” 

“ _ **Bastard**_ ” the word slipped past Nat’s lips, hot and furious, before she can remind herself that she should be staying calm for Daisy. Mercifully her Pauchok doesn’t flinch, just sniffles again and tucks herself somehow closer. 

“He wasn’t so bad, he was usually pretty ok when he wasn’t drunk. Got me new sneakers when the ones I arrived in wore through. Took us out for pizza and got us toys and stuff after a drunk night. I was usually too quick for him to catch anyway.”

Natasha could feel fury, icily hot and potent crawling up her throat “Buying a kid stuff doesn’t make beating them up ok. It  _ never _ makes it ok.”

Daisy shrugged a little “I know. Now I mean, I didn’t then. I was sad when I got sent back, I liked it there. Not them really, she barely noticed us and he kept getting drunk, but I had a good foster brother. Danny took a liking to me, taught me how to patch up my own scraped knees and how to steal first-aid supplies and chocolate bars from the shops. He read me bedtime stories sometimes, and climbed trees with me. Let me tag along with his mates even though I was 7 and he was 13. I used to hack into film websites for him so we didn’t have to pay. He was probably a bad influence, but it was like having family.”

Natasha felt like crying and screaming and hunting down the people who had hurt her little girl so badly that  _ that _ was enough to make an abusive home a good memory. “You have a family now Pauchok.” she says instead “You’ll never be alone again. Never.”

“ _Promise?_ ” Daisy whispered, voice shaky and young and stripped of all the bravado that usually filled it. 

“I swear it” Natasha replied, and she meant it. “You have me and Clint and May and Coulson, and FitzSimmons and the rest of your crazy team. You’ve got the biggest family ever Pauchok. You’re never gonna be alone, Pauchok, never.”

“Ok” Daisy whispered, and her death grip (which Nat hadn’t even noticed until then) loosened, her body relaxing into Nat’s. 

** START READING FROM HERE **

“Natasha?”

“Hmm?”

“Why do you call me Pauchok?”

Nat felt a sad smile pull at her face “Its Russian, it means spider. It was what I always called you, those months you were mine. You were my baby Pauchok, all pink skin and wide eyes and wailing for milk.” she can’t stop pain from leaking into her voice, the loss. “I was gonna keep you with me forever, watch you learn to walk and talk, but I had to leave you when you’d barely learned to laugh.” Her arms tighten reflexively around Daisy, the memory of that loss, the way it had carved her open to leave her baby Pauchok behind in that house and not look back tearing at her.

“We both lost our family didn’t we.” Daisy said quietly “But it worked out in the end didn’t it?”

Nat wanted to protest, to say that the nightmare Daisy had just had showed how very much it hadn’t, but she couldn’t change the past, and looking back did no good, so she just leaned down to press a kiss to Daisy’s hair “I guess it did” she said. Then, on a whim “There’s something you should have.”

She gently extracted herself from Daisy’s embrace to dig through her pack, locating the photo where it always was in her tac bags, and offers it to Daisy, switching on the light while she’s up. Daisy takes it gently, eyes widening as she scans the photo. 

“Is that me?”

The photo showed a much younger, dark-haired assassin perching awkwardly on an old rocking chair, hair half covering her face as she looks down at the shawl-wrapped bundle in her arms. The photo is black and white, but the entranced expression on her face is still clear.

“Yeah” Nat says, voice a little rough “It’s the only photo I have. I didn’t even know your father had taken it, or I’d have destroyed it to keep you safe. I found it in the house that, that day.” that day she’d visited a ghost town and shattered into a billion pieces. “You should keep it. I’ve got copies”

Daisy gave a chocked sounding noise and just nodded, her eyes damp with tears, and Nat for a moment, thought that maybe this would all work out.

\--------------

By the time they have washed up and dressed Daisy feels a little more like herself. She retreated back to her own bunk to shower and dress, enjoying the feel of clean skin after having fallen asleep before she could shower the night before. It felt good to get the residual dirt and smell of the mission off her skin, like washing away the terror of trying to stop her da- _ director _ bleeding out. She dressed in comfortable workout clothes and tied back her damp hair, and felt normalcy settle around her again. Well, what passed for normal when living in a base for secret agents and inhumans anyway. She wrapped her usual walls and bravado around herself before meeting Natasha out in the corridor. She couldn’t help but feel a little embarrassed about how childish and vulnerable she’d let herself be that morning, even if she’s already tucked every moment of the morning inside her mind with moments of that  _ something _ with May or Coulson. 

The kitchen is empty when they arrive, most of the base probably already having eaten (it was 9am on the base, when the day usually started somewhere between 5 and 8am), and Natasha started hunting through the fridge and cupboards for ingredients saying “I’ll make porridge”

“Why porridge?” Daisy asked, trying not to grimace. She had bad memories of lukewarm or cold porridge from foster homes and feeling sick after forcing it down. 

“It’s hot, its got lots of energy in it and it’s healthier than cheerios” 

Daisy chose not to reply, she’d learned long ago not to complain when a parent figure decided what was for a meal (you were more likely to lose that and all other food than be made to eat it in some foster homes) and it didn’t look like her mama was going to let her pick out her own food.

Natasha flicked a glance back at her when she didn’t reply, and paused her searching to give Daisy an amused look “You don’t like porridge?”

Daisy felt her breath catch slightly, old memories of what followed similar questions in several foster homes rattling around her mind. Stupid dream, it had dragged up things Daisy was quite content on leaving in the past. “It’s ok.” she said.

Natasha snorted “Liar. You’ll like this though. Even Clint likes my kasha.” 

Daisy somewhat doubted it, but she stuck bread in the toaster and got some bowls and cutlery out, and then found herself watching in fascination as Natasha heated several different grains (which Daisy hadn’t even know they had in the kitchen) in a pan with some water, stirring carefully. She pulled it off the heat after a while and drained the excess water, before adding in swirls of honey, mixed berries from the fridge, and raisins, and pouring the mixture into two bowls, adding a little cold milk on top and passing the fuller of the bowls to Daisy.

Daisy smiled her thanks, and held her face there as she started, only to blink in surprise “It’s nice!”

Natasha snorted, voice amused as she said “I told you you’d like it. It’s not so nice cold though.”

Daisy took the hint and dug in, pushing the toast stack she’d made across the table towards her mama as she did. She resisted the mischievous urge to point out that the assassin had almost just told her to ‘eat it while it’s hot’ because the kasha really was good and teasing the black widow was probably not something she should get into the habit of.

“I thought I smelled Kasha” said a voice from the door, and Daisy looked up to see her new Uncle Clint wander across the kitchen to peer into the pan on the cooker, pouting when he found it empty. 

“Kasha?” asked May, following Clint into the kitchen with an armful of files, Coulson following behind her. 

“It’s a Russian porridge” Natasha said, and Daisy looked up just in time to see something like a smirk flicker across her mama’s face as she looked at May, before it vanished so quickly Daisy suspected she’d probably imagined it. Then May turned to look at her and Daisy gulped. 

“Good morning?” 

May glared “No physical training for 24 hours.” she said, in lieu of a greeting.

“What? Why?”

May’s glare somehow intensified, and Daisy wished she hadn’t said anything. “I sent you to medical.”

“But I’m fine now” she protested, because apparently she didn’t know when to quit.

“That’s not an excuse” Coulson said, fixing Daisy with his ‘disappointed dad’ look, which was somehow worse than May’s glare. Daisy squirmed in her seat, suddenly feeling irrationally guilty despite the fact that Coulson _hadn’t gone to medical either!_

“Fine” Daisy said, unable to meet either of her superiors eyes anymore. 

“Stop sulking.” May said, but her tone sounded significantly less annoyed “We came to find you because we need you to dig up everything you can on some new human-experiment thing we’ve just caught wind of. There’s just a bit too much chatter about Hercules going on in dodgy places and we’d like to know about it before it becomes more than chatter.” 

Daisy perked up instantly “Hacking?”

Coulson winced and Daisy realised she probably shouldn’t sound so keen on what was technically less-than-legal. “Yes, hacking.”

“Don’t get caught” May reminded her, and Daisy tried not to look offended as she hopped up to get her laptop from her bunk. 

“Finish your breakfast.” said three voices at once and Daisy spent a confused moment wondering when exactly this had become her life. 

\--------------

An hour later Daisy was deep into coding a program to scan various channels for mentions of ‘Hercules’ and enjoying herself immensely (it’s been a while since she’s had a decent programming job to get into). Her mama, who seems to have decided to stick close to her for the day, is sitting next to her in the computer room, typing at her own laptop, Clint doing something on his phone and spinning on a swivel-chair behind her. She’s almost finished the programme (which will give her points to start to look more closely and hack into (yay)) when her mama-Natasha, when had she started calling the woman mama?- spoke.

“Which children’s home did you grow up in?”

Her voice was deceptively light, and Daisy frowned at the question “St Agnes, why?”

Natasha huffed “That’s what Coulson said, but there’s only one St Agnes in the US and the only Daisy who went there is currently 16 and got adopted 9 years ago.”

“You’re looking up my past?” she said, not sure how to feel about that. 

Natasha gave her a too-innocent smile “I thought I might go see a few of your childhood homes”

Well that was a little weird...wait... “The Sanfirds already got arrested for child-abuse, about a year after I was sent back. He broke one of their new foster-kids arms and the hospital noticed other bruises.” she said. 

Natasha’s innocent look developed a little too much of a smirk and began to look predatory “Oh good, then there’ll be an arrest in that area a year after - you said you were 7?”

“Errrr” said Daisy, wondering if she should try to stop the black widow there and realising she probably couldn’t. 

“Why isn’t there any mention of you at St Agnes?” Clint asked, looking up from his phone, appearing entirely unconcerned about the fact that his partner seemed to be planning a murder next to him. 

“They didn’t know my birth name, so all my records were under Mary Sue Poots.” Daisy explained “Although you won’t find anything online about me because I deleted myself when I ran from the system.”

Natasha looked up at that “You deleted yourself online? Completely? That takes some doing.”

Daisy let pride cross her face briefly “I managed to delete someone’s identity completely in 20 minutes while running a separate hack my first mission with SHIELD. I’m good.”

Clint looked impressed “Nat and I are pretty good at hacking ourselves, well, Nat’s good, I manage, but even Nat couldn’t attempt that.”

Natasha huffed, but didn’t deny her partner’s statement, or (thankfully) return her attention to her investigation “Who taught you to hack?”

“Some foster siblings got me into it when I showed myself to be good at programming, and I taught myself enough to find places on the net with lessons and stuff, and worked it out from there. Hung out for a bit with a hacker group after I ditched the system and shared tips and tricks and improved my speed and stuff.” She let an amused smirk cross her face as she remembered something “We used to give each other challenges and stuff. It was one of that group that dared me to hack into SI”

Clint gave a bark of laughter “Tony’ll love that! Not one but  _ two _ Romanoff’s have tried to hack him!”

Daisy felt a rush of warmth at being referred to as a Romanoff, but couldn’t help sounding indignant “What do you mean tried? I got in!”

Her mama – Natasha drat it! - blinked at her slowly “Only five people have ever successfully gotten into Tony’s programs. He employs four of them now, the only one he didn’t catch was....” She trailed off, eyes widening as Daisy started to turn red “You’re  _ skyenet _ ???”

“I was 17” Daisy muttered defensively “And drunk. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“You hacked Tony drunk at 17???” Clint asked, his face looking like Christmas had come early.

“I guess? How do you know about it anyway, there’s no way Stark hasn’t fixed it by now.”

“Pepper told us about the hack. It took him three months to fix.” Natasha said, her own face full of deep amusement. 

“Did you really put a bug in JARVIS to make him sing ‘I know a song that will get on your nerves’ on repeat whenever he brought a girl back?”

Daisy felt herself flushing again “It was before he was Iron Man.” she said defensively.

“Can you do it again?” asked Clint, his voice pleading.

“Clint! Don’t encourage her to hack us! It’s illegal.” her mama protested, then hesitated “Can you Pauchok?”

Daisy couldn’t stop the giggle that slipped past her lips “Probably, but not without it being traceable, his securities too good. I did it from nearby public Wi-Fi last time, and then high-tailed it out.”

“So we need to take you somewhere away from your base first” Clint summarised.

“Clint!” Natasha repeated, although it sounded more reflexive than anything else, and she didn’t sound _that_ opposed to the idea. 

“Ok, I’ll need to take you somewhere away from the base first.” Clint said, smirking, and Natasha sighed, going back to her laptop. 

“Uhh, Natasha?”

“Yeah Pauchok?”

“Uh, what are you going to do if you find the Sanfirds? You won’t actually kill them right?”

Natasha paused “No. They don’t know that though” she said, which wasn’t exactly reassuring. 

“Right” Daisy said, and went back to the distinctly simpler world of high-level computer programming, finishing up her programme and uploading it to the right channels before she started the much more fun job of hacking into likely sources of further information. Computers she could deal with. Vengeful former assassins, not so much....

\---------------

By the time lunchtime rolled around Daisy was knee-deep in hacking, following up leads the programme sent her and hacking encrypted chat-rooms, video surveillance from seedy bars, and the like and taking names and screenshots of everyone and compiling lists, seeing if any names popped up more than once, and then looking into their associates. She was dragged back into the non-digital world by Simmons waving a hand infront of her eyes, looking exasperated.

“Hey Jemma! Uh, how many times did you just call me?”

“Three, you should come eat something, the rest of the team are making sandwiches in the kitchen.”

“Ok, I’ll come in a minute, I’ll just finish this up.”

“Last time you said that you didn’t stop hacking until 2am”

Oh yeah, she’d forgotten about that.

“And Fitz might finish the nutella if you don’t come rescue it...” Jemma coaxed. 

“Ok, ok, I’m coming” Daisy laughed, fingers flying across the screen as she wrapped up her hack, saved her data and sent the lot to Coulson. The rest of it could wait for a while. 

Her mama –  _ Natasha _ , dammit. It was waaaay to soon to call her mama – was watching Jemma with amusement, and when she stood Natasha reached out to poke Clint, clearly sensing that Jemma was way to nervous of them to actually initiate contact. 

“Leave the computer game bird-brain, come eat.”

Clint whined, and Daisy bit her lip. She wondered if he wanted to join her, Mack, Hunter and Bobbi’s occasional x-box tournaments sometime. If he hung around that is. It occurred to her suddenly that she didn’t know how long they were staying for. How long Natasha was staying for. The assassins hadn’t said anything about leaving, but nor had they about staying.

“Hey Jemma? I’m just gonna be a minute, I’ll catch up ok?”

Jemma squinted suspiciously at her “You’ve got two minutes, and then I’m dragging you out.”

Daisy laughed, knowing the little scientist couldn’t move Fitz if he didn’t cooperate, never mind anyone else on the base “See you in a minute.”

Jemma waved distractedly as she left, eyes flickering over to the two Avengers who had also stopped. Oh right, she hadn’t told most of her team yet. Only May, Coulson and Bobbi (and she by accident) knew.

“What’s up Pauchok” Natasha asked when the scientist was gone, almost certainly having caught her eyes flickering over to her. 

“Ummmm” Daisy said awkwardly “I was just, I was wondering how long you were planning on staying.”

Natasha’s face and eyes went blank in an instant “As long as we’re welcome.” she said, voice even and toneless.

Clint stepped forwards to smack his partner around the back of her head and actually answered the question “I’m staying for a day, Nat’s staying until she has a mission that she can’t put off, so at least a few weeks unless we have an Assemble call.”

“ _Really?_ ” Daisy blurts, wishing she could bite the word back a second later at how happy she sounds. The last thing she wants is to sound clingy. Although by the relief suddenly dancing on her mama’s face she’d missed something in the interaction. 

“Yeah, really. I’m here as long as you want me.” Natasha said, voice husky with some emotion. 

Daisy felt her own eyes burn with tears. Her mama wanted to stick around! For her! “Uh, I should probably tell my team then. If, if that’s ok I mean?”

“Of course it’s ok Pauchok”

“Right, uh, food then” Daisy said, hurrying towards the kitchen and trying to work out how she was going to tell her team/family that another of her parents had turned up and oh-by-the-way it’s the Black Widow. They’d think she was pulling an elaborate prank. 

She busied her hands making a couple of sandwiches when she arrived, rescuing the Nutella from Fitz long enough to make a sandwich and then making a healthier one to go with it when Coulson gave her a pointed look. She took her plate and copied her teammates, leaning back against the counter. The Nutella tasted good but she could barely swallow around the tightness in her throat, and her stomach felt weird. Clearly she was going to have to tell them before she could enjoy her food.

“I found my mother.” she blurted out. 

The reaction is pretty immediate.

“Oh not another psycho! We only just recovered from the last one!” Hunter complained (earning a punch to the arm by Bobbi) at the exact same time as FitzSimmons burst out “I _knew_ it!”

Daisy felt her jaw drop open, staring at her friends “You did?”

“I mean, we weren’t sure” Fitz said

“But something was definitely going on between you two” Simmons said, gesturing at Natasha

“And if you look closely” Fitz went on

“You two do kind of look similar.” Simmons finished. 

Daisy could feel herself still gaping, and she looked around the circle of her teammates around the kitchen “You all knew?”

“Ah, we all knew something was up. You live on a spy base tremors.” Mack said shrugging “I’m happy for you girl.”

“Wait, you’re saying the _Black Widow_ is your _mother???_ ” Hunter spluttered

“ _Most_ of us knew something was up” Bobbi corrected. 

“So, what were you saying about psychos?” Natasha asked lazily from where she leaned on the counter next to Clint, her smile showing just a little bit too much teeth to be friendly. 

Hunter turned an interesting shade of white and swallowed audibly, and Daisy couldn’t help laughing.

“She’s not going to kill you mate” she said, because she’d begun to suspect that Natasha was all bark and no bite towards her allies. “Probably” she adds, because she doesn’t want to ruin her mama’s image – and because it’s amusing watching Hunter’s face fall again. 

“How long have you known?” Simmons into the pause that followed.

“A couple of days.” 

Mack looked over towards Natasha “What happened, I mean, it’s been 20 years?”

It was a testament to Mack’s easy going nature that the question is clearly just that, a question, not an accusation. But Daisy still sees Natasha hesitate, looking for a tiny instant pained, so Daisy answered instead. “She left me with my Dad in Hunan, and cut ties to keep me safe from the KGB. She went to check on me a few years later but Hydra and then SHIELD had already been so...”

“I thought she was dead until she walked into Coulson’s office” Natasha said, her blank face not quite hiding the pain that tinged her voice. 

“I’m sorry” Mack said softly, sympathising without pity for what she’d been through. Mack was good at that, not pitying people. Natasha nodded without saying anything, and Mack continued “I’m glad you found each other now.” and Nat gave her a genuine smile. 

“Yeah, we’re happy for you both.”

“It’s wonderful!” FitzSimmons chimed in, and Bobbi and Hunter added similar sentiments, May and Coulson just giving her soft looks. 

“Thanks guys” Daisy said, feeling warmth spread through her at her teams reactions. They were the best. 

And that kind of was that, conversation had moved on in five minutes. It was a (possibly sad) truth that the Black Widow turning out to be the mother of one of their teammates isn’t even close to the craziest thing that had happened in the last year. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies to anyone who actually can cook Russian food. I googled Russian breakfast foods and guessed how to make it...


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, I think I've got an update schedule I can reliably keep to worked out now, and will be updating every other day. I've got a rough plan for the rest of this story, but if there's anything anyone would particularly like to see, put it in a message or a comment and I'll see if I can put it in :-)

Daisy and Mack disappeared down to the Cocoon again after lunch, promising May as she went that she was only going to check up on them and give them the news too and there would be no training involved. She returned a couple of hours later and found them working in the computer lab again. It was a good place to work Natasha had reasoned. It had nothing to do with the fact that her daughter would probably be returning at some point to finish what she’d been doing before Simmons dragged her away (and Nat had almost laughed aloud at the sulky look on the 26 year olds face at being pulled away from her coding).

“Do you want to come down to the Cocoon later?” Daisy asked as she arrived, glancing nervously over at them and busying her hands with opening up her laptop again. 

“I thought the Cocoon was out of bounds?” Clint asked.

“It is” Daisy said, hands fidgeting with the corner of her computer “mostly. Coulson’s made it sort of unofficially out of bounds without an invitation, so it’s safe. So the Afterlife inhumans feel they can come here safely and maybe join up. Only Lincoln has so far but, well, it’s kind of our bolt hole. So no-one comes in without an invitation. But I’m inviting you. To come down later I mean.”

She was rambling, Natasha noted, watching the nervousness in her eyes, and the vulnerability behind them. She was inviting them into her safe space Nat realised. Not an open invitation for whenever they wanted, but still an invitation. The trust took Nat’s breath away, given when she’d only know Nat a couple of days. But the vulnerability in her eyes spoke of her uncertainty about it, and Nat didn’t like it.

“You don’t have to invite us down. It’s your safe-space Pauchok, you don’t have to share it.”

Daisy fidgeted with her laptop a moment longer, before she relaxed, some decision made “It’s a caterpillar space. And they want to meet you. It’s an invitation from all of us, so you’re allowed in.”

Interesting Natasha mused as she accepted, she’d gathered that Coulson had made it so only Daisy could invite people down to the Cocoon, and Daisy didn’t often do so, but Daisy sounded like she only did that to keep the space mostly ‘human’ free, creating a space where inhumans didn’t have to be afraid. Coulson had given Daisy the power, but Daisy had almost passed it on to the others in that she seemed to be only bringing people down when the other inhumans asked. It was a protective side of her Pauchok she hadn’t seen yet, and it made her want to smile. She thought she was going to enjoy meeting the strange bunch (from what she’d heard) of people her Pauchok defended.

\-------------

Daisy, having stopped talking after inviting them down to the Cocoon, spent the entire afternoon hunched over her laptop, fingers flying across the screen tirelessly. Clint vanished around 2 and didn’t reappear for hours, finally returning an armful of clothes. Natasha found a pile of them dumped into her lap and on top of her own laptop (just because she wasn’t staying at Avenger’s tower didn’t mean she didn’t have Avengers work to do.).

“Got you some more clothes.” Clint said, stating the obvious “You can’t wear the same two tac-suits forever.”

“Thanks” Nat said dryly, pulling the clothes off her keyboard but noting that they were comfortable and practical and sending Clint a genuine smile. 

“Welcome. I’ll bring you some of your clothes from the tower at some point. Hey Daisy?”

The call got a twitch from Daisy, whose fingers were flying across the screen, but nothing else.

Clint didn’t bother calling again, and took the more physical approach of tugging Daisy’s ponytail until her head rose in indignation.

“I got you a T-shirt” he said when he actually had her attention, ignoring the glare, and dropped it on her lap. 

Daisy set her computer aside and held it up to reveal a graphic T-shirt with a picture of Clint falling through the air while shooting an arrow. Natasha thought it came from footage of the battle of New York.   


“For my favourite niece” Clint said with a smirk, and Nat saw Daisy’s face light up. She made a mental note to get hold of a Black Widow shirt as soon as she could. No way was she letting her partner dress her daughter in Hawkeye merchandise without doing the same! Even if she _had_ given both Cooper and Lila Black Widow onesies. And jackets. 

Daisy stood up to give Clint a hug when he held his arms out, then groaned as she stretched her arms out.

“Urg, why do I always forget not to hunch over a keyboard for hours?” she groaned, mostly to herself. 

“Want a massage?” Clint offered, and Nat smiled at the interaction. Figured that Clint would be as good with her kid as with his own. Her kid. The world had gone mad. 

“Nah, I got it.” Daisy said, stretching a hand behind her back and directing a stream of her power at it, letting out a moan as the distortions hit her back. 

“Are you vibrating your muscles?” Nat asked curiously

“Its effective” Daisy said with a grin, moving her hand to direct her power.

“Huh” she said “Could you do it in a fight?”

“Vibrate my muscles? Why would I want to?”

“Someone elses, make their legs shake until they fall.”

Daisy blinked “I never thought of that! I don’t know.”

“We’ll try tomorrow” she said decidedly. “And see what else you can do.” because there was no way she wasn’t going to make sure Daisy was deadly in battle. Anything she could do to make sure her Pauchok had an edge, to make it more likely that her Pauchok would survive anything she got into. 

Daisy just shrugged, and continued to give herself a back massage, before taking her laptop to go show May and Coulson what she had.

\-----------

She returned twenty minutes later without the laptop, and a cheerful expression “I’m done for the day. Coulson says he’ll let me know if he needs me to follow anything up but otherwise to leave it for now, so we can go down to the Cocoon.”

“We’re not eating first?” Clint asked, and Natasha shot her partner an amused look. Him and his stomach.

“Ben’s cooking, and he said he was making a ‘proper meal’ so I hope you’re hungry” Daisy said, her voice speaking of some joke they didn’t know. 

Her Pauchok led them confidently through the corridors to the south-west corner of the base, stopping when she reached a dead-end hallway with a trapdoor dropped ajar in the floor. She pulled it open, and jumped down, swinging off the edge of the floor to slow her fall and landing with a quiet thump. Nat gauged the depth based on the sound and hopped down after her daughter, landing soundlessly and hearing Clint do the same behind her. Daisy raised an impressed eyebrow, but didn’t say anything, just turning and leading the way along a dimly lit white tunnel. Five minutes walk brought them to a white door with a security panel beside it, and Daisy entered a series of numbers quickly. There was a sharp beep, and another panel appeared out of the wall, which Daisy scanned her hand into, followed by one of her eyes.

“Quake – with guests Natasha Romanov, codename Black Widow and Clinton Barton, codename Hawkeye.”

Another beep Daisy opened the door, slipping inside and holding the door open for them, shutting it securely behind them with another beep.

“Hey guys, we’re here!” 

There was a scramble of footsteps, then a teenager with short blond hair, streaked with purple highlights arrived in the room, followed at a slightly slower pace by a blond man in his late twenties and a dark haired man who looked to be in his early twenties.

“Arin says you don’t need to shout, he felt you coming. But Arin didn’t tell anyone, so thanks for shouting.” the teenager said to Daisy with a grin, then turned her attention onto Natasha and Clint. 

“Hi!”

“Hi, you must be Sophie” Clint said, stepping forwards to shake her hand.

“Yep, youngest and coolest of the caterpillar team.” 

“And not technically cleared for the team until she finishes school.” Daisy pointed out firmly

Sophie just smirked “Technically.” she agreed, and Daisy laughed.

“Sophie, Joey, Lincoln, this is Natasha and Clint.” Daisy said, gesturing slightly to each inhuman as she said their names. “Sophie does portals between places, Joey melts anything metal, and Lincoln absorbs, emits and a little bit controls electricity.”

Joey just waved at them shyly, but Lincoln came over to shake their hands, “So you’re Dais y ’s mom?” he asked, as Daisy fell into conversation with Joey.

Natasha nodded “And you’re the inhuman from Afterlife.” she kept her voice carefully neutral, neither supporting the fact that he’d joined the other team or judging that he’d been one of the people who supported the man who tried to kill all non-inhumans and drain her daughters life. Not obviously anyway. She hadn’t decided whether she liked him yet.

“Yeah.” Lincoln said, then hesitated slightly and continued “We’re not the Avengers, but we’re a pretty good team, and getting better all the time. And if you turn out to be like Jia Ying, well, we’re not the Avengers, but we’re not helpless. Just so you know.”

Hmm, decision made, she liked him. She offered him a small but genuine smile “You better be good if you’re going to be watching her six in the field.” and if her smile had a little bit of teeth in it, well, smiles can communicate many things.

Lincoln for his part gave her a much more genuine smile, and a nod at the response, and gestured for them to follow Daisy and Joey through a door.

“Everyone else is in the kitchen” he called ahead, and Daisy called back a thanks. 

The kitchen turned out to be a large white space rather like the rest of the cocoon, which seemed to be walled completely with thick, white, hexagon covered walls that Nat recognised as the near indestructible walls SHIELD had used in a few of their base training rooms and most of the prison rooms. The kitchen had two walls covered in counters and utilities, with another dark haired man spinning from counter to cooker stirring sauces and grabbing things to add to various pots. The whole room smelled amazing. Daisy introduced them. 

“Natasha, you met Elena, also known as Yo-Yo briefly, her power is speed, and snapping back to where she starts. She’s the only other caterpillar we’ve agreed a codename for.”

“I didn’t agree. You lot agree.” Elena protested

Daisy grinned slightly but moved on “Next to her at the table is Jennifer, almost always called Jeni, she’s a healer, and currently taking a field-medic training course. Next to Jeni, the guy in the glasses, ear protectors and nose and mouth mask is Arin, Sophie's brother. His power is more an extreme increase in sensitivity, hence the sense dampeners FitzSimmons made to help him acclimatise. The guy cooking is Ben, who used to be a chef and pretty much has total control of the kitchen and will defend it with surprising force, oh, and he controls shadows.”

Ben didn’t turn around to greet them, but a shadow rose up on the wall in the shape of a hand and waved from side to side, and Natasha noticed abruptly that half the spoons in the pots were being stirred by shadow hands.

“Caterpillars, this is Clint Barton, Hawkeye and Natasha Romanov, Black Widow and my mother.” 

The caterpillars offered various greetings, and the other caterpillars pulled out chairs and joined their teammates at the table, pulling out a couple extra as they did in invitation. Natasha sat between Jeni and Sophie, the blond having immediately claimed the seat next to her brother, and Clint sat down next to Lincoln, an empty space on his other side, Daisy sitting next to Joey to continue what seemed to be a discussion on how control was doing. 

Jeni reached out a hand to hers “May I?” she asked

“Do what?” Natasha asked cautiously

“Scan you? I’ve done all of them and Lincoln says its good to practice scanning new people.”

“Uh, ok” Natasha said, holding her hand out to meet Jeni’s awkwardly. She didn’t feel anything but the inhuman hummed for a moment then “Lots of old injuries.”

“Occupational hazard” she said wryly 

“Torn muscles healed well, broken bones healed straight.” Jeni listed as if she hadn’t spoken “Hmm, something strange in your blood I haven’t sensed before. Not inhuman like ours, but helping you heal, reducing lingering damage. But still scar tissue through your left shoulder, knife wound? And in your lower stomach, bullet wound like Daisy’s.”

Natasha ignored the reference to the various serums the Red Room had put in her body, but felt her attention sharpen to a sudden point moments later. “Like Daisy's? She was shot?”

There was sudden silence in the kitchen.

“uhh” said Daisy “occupational hazard?”

Natasha reminded herself to breath, reminded herself that her little girl was sitting perfectly healthily right in front of her. “When? Where?” she asked, voice rough.

Daisy looked rather nervously at her, but resignedly lifted her T-shirt to reveal  _ two _ patches of scaring  on her stomach . “One of the bus missions. It was my own fault.”

Natasha took a moment to remember  _**how** _ to breath. Shots like that... “How are you alive?” she asked, barely even caring that she could hear a slight tremor in her voice. Clint cast her a deeply concerned look, but she ignored it in favour of her Pauchok. 

“T.A.H.I.T.I, Coulson tracked it down and found the same drug that was used on him.”

“The drug with the really nasty side effects?” Clint asked, because Nat was apparently struggling with speech. 

“It doesn’t have the side effects if you already have Kree DNA in your system.” Daisy said, and Nat swallowed back her fear. 

“I’m going to kill Coulson.” she said, voice flat and matter of fact. 

Daisy looked worriedly at her as the caterpillars eyes flickered nervously all over the room “Please don’t. It really was my fault. I went in alone.”

“You shouldn’t have been left alone. You should have been trained better than to go in alone.” Nat said, although she didn’t actually intend to kill Coulson. Just shout a bit. Or a lot. 

Daisy shrugged “Mission went wrong, we got separated and I made the call to improvise and keep going for the objective, and it was my call to go in alone. Anyway, if it wasn’t for Coulson I actually would be dead.”

“Food’s ready” Ben said, before Nat could find a response to that, and no less than five caterpillars leapt to their feet calling “I’ll lay the table” and Nat dropped the subject. 

Mercifully, conversation over the meal was a lot less tense, Daisy asking about their afternoons and how their individual training was going, and then conversation turning to amusing stories of working out their powers (of which they had many). Lincoln had apparently short circuited every single electronic on Afterlife after going through terrigenisis, and shocked his trainer so badly his hair had stood on end for two days. Ben had managed to punch himself in the nose the week before with his own shadow, and the resulting nosebleed Jeni had stopped so thoroughly that she’d cut off blood supply to his nose completely and there had been a panicked, numb nose d minute before she’d managed to get it flowing again. Joey had melted every piece of metal cutlery he touched after being picked up/rescued, and had only just been allowed to use it again. Sophie had gotten  the hang of her portals pretty quickly but learned that if she opened a portal linked between the sink and over Elena’s head, then Yo-Yo was capable of ambushing her with super-speed-fired waterballoons, and she would come out worse off. Arin had only recently gotten past the constant sensory overload form his power and didn’t have anything close to an amusing story, but all the caterpillars seemed to take great amusement in recounting tales of Daisy crashing into walls, ceilings, floors, furniture and everything else while trying to get the hang of flying, not to mention the number of times she’d propelled herself to the floor while  practising air-vibration powered flips. By the time they’d finished the main course Natasha got the impression that the inhumans were a bunch of super-powered siblings equal parts protective, loyal and teasing of their sister and leader. 

They cleared the meal away in under a minute, Strike Team Delta told to stay in their seats as 16 hands worked in surprisingly effective coordination to clear the plates and stick leftovers in the fridge.

“And for dessert, homemade ice-cream” Ben announced, opening the freezer and Nat stared. 

“I’m going to be sick if I eat anything else.” she said with absolute certainty. 

Daisy laughed “I said you needed to pace yourself” she said, although the hand she had over her stomach said that she was questioning her own ability to eat anything else as well. She like all the inhumans had eaten portions Nat was more familiar with Captain America tucking away than small-to-average sized men and women, but it seemed even they had limits.

“But its raspberry ripple with pecans” Ben said, holding the tub and looking sad. 

“Small bowls” Lincoln said firmly in response. 

“I will serve” Elena added, firmly taking the tub off Ben “Or we all go pop and no more caterpillars.”

Ben huffed, but allowed his teammate to take his cooking and serve up controlled portions into bowls. Nat shook her head when offered one (she really would be sick, she knew body well enough to know that) but Clint took his gleefully.

“I don’t suppose you’d like to join the Avengers? We’ll pay you better.”

“Hey!” Daisy protested “No poaching!”

Ben for his part wagged a finger, and a shadow wrapped itself around Clints bowl and suddenly yanked it away. “No dessert for you.” He said, and half the table burst out laughing as Clint somehow managed to splutter and pout at the same time.

“Awwww” Clint complained finally, taking it in good humour “It was just a compliment!”

“Then the _caterpillar_ chef accepts the compliment” Ben said, returning the bowl with a smile, point made. 

Natasha had the fleeting thought that this lot were going to be as interesting as her own team once they really got going. The world was just lucky they didn’t have their own Tony Stark. The world could only take one Stark, and this group didn’t have a Pepper to deal with him.

\-----------

Daisy personally thought that the meal had gone really well. Everyone seemed to get on pretty well and aside from Jeni accidentally telling her mama she’d been shot twice in the stomach, it had gone smoothly. She said goodnight to her caterpillars just before nine and brought the Avengers back to her bunk, making extra sure the Cocoon was secure behind her, although she was pretty sure both Avengers could get in if they really wanted to. She said goodnight to the Avengers when they got back, and returned to her bunk and after setting her alarm, went straight to bed.

She couldn’t help remembering the night before, and felt a soft smile spread over her face remembering her mama fussing – she was fussing, no matter how much the black widow might protest otherwise. It made her feel warm inside, like a little bit of her childhood had been rescued. She fell asleep thinking that maybe, somehow, after all these years she really had gotten a happy ending.

\------

Her alarm went off sharply under her pillow at 3.15am, and she woke with a groan. Daisy moaned into her pillow, trying to remember why she’d thought this was a good idea again, but dragged herself out of bed with a smirk at the thought of the mornings planned activities. They’d been waiting to do this for ages, but had had to order something online for the prank, and then Fitz had needed to snatch a moment to alter it a little without being seen. Simmons had texted her yesterday afternoon to say they were ready, and Daisy had brought Sophie on board just before leaving the Cocoon. This was going to be fun.

She dressed quickly in black and unhooked the bell (not that it seemed to have made a single sound when the Black Widow had snuck into her room at night, although Daisy wasn’t sure she wanted to think about that too hard) from above her door before slipping out. She was almost at the lab before she sensed a vibration behind her that shouldn’t have been there and nearly jumped a mile. She spun round, palms pointed at the figure, and a patch of slightly-too-dark shadow said warmly. 

“Good instincts. I’ve been following you since the bunks though.”

“Good morning to you too” Daisy mumbled, disgruntled “Are you watching me 24/7?”

“Heard you sneak out.” Natasha said, with a small shake of her head.

“I was quiet” Daisy whined.

Natasha just raised an eyebrow, silently pointing out that she was the Black Widow. Daisy sighed, that was a good point, and tried to work out how to ditch the woman, before spotting FitzSimmons coming out of the lab, faces both bright with mischief, and knew it was too late. Nat looked between the trio, glancing from one face to another before smirking.

“Whose the target?”

Simmons leapt a mile, yelping with shock and Fitz jerked backwards and yelped with pain when he hit his elbow against a table.

“Sorry guys, I was followed out.” Daisy said sheepishly.

“T-thats quite alright Daisy” Jemma said, to her credit only sounding a little startled. 

“Little warning would be nice” Fitz complained, but without any heat.

“So, whose the target?” Natasha repeated.

“Target? What target?” Jemma said nervously “We were just, uhh, meeting up to discuss umm” the scientist looked around for inspiration and catching sight of a book blurted “the genuine science of hypnotism”

There was a long pause, and then Fitz said sarcastically “yes, because that definitely sounds likely and not at all like we’re up to no good.”

“At least she didn’t tell her she has a gorgeous head” Daisy deadpanned.

“Will you let go of that already! I dealt with him didn’t I?”

“You shot Agent Sitwell” Fitz pointed out.

“That’s fine, he was Hydra.” Natasha said, emerging properly from the shadow so she was more than a voice and vague shape. “I kicked him off a building.” she added conversationally, and Daisy turned to gape at her. 

“We needed information” she replied, shrugging “Falcon caught him.”

“Right” Daisy said, not quite sure what the appropriate response to hearing you mama casually mention kicking a man off a building was. 

“So...” Nat asked

“Oh, Hunter.” Daisy said, resignedly. 

“Don’t tell her!” Simmons protested. 

“It’s not like we were going to be able to sneak away!” Daisy retorted impatiently, then “You’re not going to stop us are you?”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

Daisy grinned and FitzSimmons shrugged and Fitz set the box he was carrying down on the table he hit his elbow against. “Where’s Sophie?”

Daisy glanced at her watch “We’re early. I told her 3.20.”

As if on cue, a silvery disk appeared in midair, about the size of a large coin and shimmering like bubble mix before you blew through the hole. It widened into a small doorway and Sophie stepped through, dressed in pyjamas and rubbing sleep out of her eyes.

“This better be worth waking up” she warned grumpily, as if she hadn’t practically begged to be allowed into the pranks when Daisy mentioned having trouble sneaking into agents bedrooms. 

“Oh, it will be” she said with a smirk. “We’ve got an extra along though, before she scares you to death too.”

Natasha let out an amused snort, and Sophie flickered a glance over at her and shrugged, taking it in stride.

“Are you ready?”

“Nearly” said Fitz, handing Simmons two test tubes from the box. Simmons gave both tubes a good shake, examined the contents quickly, then poured one into the other and handed it to Daisy. 

“It will take at least two hours forty minutes to react with the air, so make sure you do it pretty early.” Jemma instructed seriously as she put them in her pocket. 

“Pour foamy chemical stuff first, got it” Daisy said, and grabbed the spray can Fitz handed her.

“That’s altered to be totally silent, and Simmons added something to make it extra sticky” the Scotsman added and Daisy smirked as she accepted the can. Hunter was going to regret his Haloween prank. 

“And here’s something just for extra fun” said Jemma, grinning a little vindictively and holding out a carton of eggs. Of the three of them, Jemma had been most freaked out by the ‘ghosts’ Hunter had managed to install in their bunks. 

“And of course, the camera” Fitz said, handing Daisy the last object in the box. “Place that first.”

“I know guys, I helped plan this remember.” Daisy pointed out. 

“Ready now” Sophie asked, almost vibrating with excitement. 

“Ready. And remember guys, sound can go through the portal too, so keep it down.”

FitzSimmons nodded seriously, and Sophie bit her lip to hold back her giggles, cupping her hands together and pulling them apart slowly, a shimmering bubble growing between her hands until with a flex of her fingers, it grew bigger than her and into a doorway, instantly going clear to reveal Hunter’s bunk, the agent himself sprawled on his stomach on the bed, snoring loudly. 

Perfect.

Daisy lightly stepped through the bubble, feeling her breath catch in amazement as she appeared in Hunter’s bunk. That was amazing no matter how many times she did it. To business though, no time to stand around on an op. She put the mini spy-cam on the desk, and pointed it at the bunk, pressing the on button and waiting for the single flash of red than signalled it was on. Then she  crept up to Hunter and carefully uncorked the test-tube in her pocket. This was the most risky part of the plan because it was most likely to wake Hunter up. She dripped the liquid slowly and carefully around his head, ad d ed a little to his cheek, then dripped the last of it carefully on the back of his neck. She held her breath as he stirred slightly, his snores hitching, but he just twitched a little and didn’t wake. 

Then she got to work with the can. It worked silently, just as promised and Daisy sprayed long strands of string around the room,  criss-crossing the from wall to wall and even floor to ceiling, creating a spiderweb of string all throughout the room. Then she pulled out the eggs and realised she had a problem. She looked back, wondering how Simmons had expected her to manage this only to find the scientist looking just as lost as she felt. 

Then Natasha appeared, rolling her eyes and gesturing for Daisy to come out. She took the eggs of her and stepped soundlessly into Hunter’s bunk, removing eggs from the carton and somehow weaving her body between the lines of string, balancing the eggs at strategic points, somehow managing not to disturb any of the narrowly spaced lines of string and emerging with an empty carton. 

Sophie let the portal collapse in on itself instantly, and burst into uncontrollable giggles.

“Shhh!” Daisy said hastily “We’re still in the middle of the base at 3am!”

Sophie made a brief attempt to control her giggles, then gave up, pulling open a fresh portal and disappearing back to the Cocoon, leaving Daisy with a (more quietly) giggling FitzSimmons and an amused ex-Russian spy. She wondered briefly what Skye of two years ago would have thought if someone had told her about this situation. That that someone was certifiably nuts probably.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning, angst coming. But fluff first :-) If you can't tell, I love FitzSimmons and Skye/Daisy's friendship

Morning arrived too soon, but  Daisy had already spent more than enough time as an agent to drag herself pretty quickly out of bed and down to the gym for tai-chi with May. Sleep was something you learned to take when you got it and make do when you didn’t as an agent, and this was far, far from the most tired she’d been in the last couple of years. 

Neither Daisy nor May spoke during the half-hours tai-chi, and Daisy felt the  normalcy of it settle deep into her mind and body, the quiet peaceful calm of the exercise and her SO’s presence next to her  centring her. It was the first tai-chi session since May had sat her down in her bunk and broke the stunning news that her mother was alive, on base and an Avenger. Normal had been a little scarce since then, and she appreciated the morning tai-chi more than she usually did. By the time they were finished she felt calmer, and more  centred than she had in days. 

“Coulson and I are flying out to meet with some of our old contacts this morning.” May said when they were done “Some names popped up from your Hercules research which we think they can tell us some more about.”

“Copy that” Daisy said “When are you getting back?”

“Not until afternoon earliest, so you’re training on your own this morning. Work on using your powers more in hand to hand, and put some target practice time in.”

“Copy that, let me know if you need me to hack anything.” Daisy said, before suddenly remembering. “Oh, Natasha wants to see if I can make vibrating someone’s muscles useful in a fight, I think she might join me training if that’s ok?”

She glanced at May to see a suddenly disgruntled expression on her face, before it quickly vanished “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“You’re my SO” Daisy pointed out, not sure why panic was gripping her chest suddenly. 

Something in the set of May’s shoulders relaxed a little “And I’m staying as your SO.” (did Daisy imagine the edge of possessiveness in her voice?) “She’s your mom though, you should spend time with her. More than that, she’s one of the best agents SHIELD ever saw, take any training she’ll give you.”

The panic vanished as quickly as it came, but “She’s not my mom.” and then, suddenly realising what she’d said “I mean, umm, she’s my mama, maybe, but not my mom.” The distinction felt strangely, deeply important.

May glanced at her, a very odd look on her face, before her face returned to it’s usual non-expression.

“Ok, not your mom” she said, nodding, and led the way out of the gym. 

Natasha, Clint, Mack, Bobbi, Coulson and FitzSimmons were already in the kitchen when they arrived, only Hunter missing. Bobbi set down her coffee when they arrived.

“I’ll should go wake Hunter.”

FitzSimmons gave little squeaks of protest, and Daisy said as innocently as she could “Oh, let him sleep a little longer.”

The older agents in the room paused and turned to look as Daisy. Ok, so maybe that hadn’t sounded as innocent as she’d hoped.

Bobbi hesitated, looking between Daisy and the door.

“Do we want a camera ready?” Coulson asked, voice part resigned, part anticipatory and part amused. Daisy sometimes forgot that May and Coulson had added their own pranks to the mix she, FitzSimmons, Bobbi, Hunter and Mack had come up with over the last year. 

“You might appreciate having one ready” Daisy said with a smirk, dropping the innocent pretence.

Bobbi looked hesitantly at the door again, not sure whether to rescue her partner in crime or sit back and watch the fun.

“Stay here Bobbi.” suggested Simmons “You’ll just get caught it in too if you try to help.”

“Yeah, Hunter’s not getting out of _this_ easily” Fitz said smugly.

Bobbi shrugged at the news, and settled back down with her coffee, apparently having settled on enjoying the fun.

“I wondered why you didn’t lace Hunter’s coffee when you got ours.” she said instead.

Daisy smirked “We know whose idea the Halloween prank was.” she said in explanation, opening the cupboard to grab a bowl.

“Sit down, I’m making pancakes” May said, intercepting her. “FitzSimmons, you too. You don’t eat enough.”

Daisy blinked. Not that it was uncommon for May to cook them breakfast, but usually it was once or maybe twice a week, not this often. She sat down though, joining FitzSimmons at the table, just catching a look on her mama’s face out of the corner of her eye, and turning to see a slightly smug look on May’s in response. What was... No, she probably didn’t want to know. Whatever history the super-agents had with pancakes, asking probably wasn’t a good idea.

“While we wait” Simmons said suddenly, an impish expression on her face “We found you a little congratulations present.” 

“Yeah, for being reunited with your mum” Fitz added, his own face twitching to hold back a smile. 

Daisy looked from one to the other, a little confused “You didn’t have to get me anything guys”

“Oh, it’s just something small.”

“A song I used to listen to when I was little.”

Simmons fiddled with her phone for a moment, and then bouncy notes that Daisy vaguely recognised from somewhere came out of the speakers. 

“ _The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout”_ sang the phone

“You’ve got to be kidding me” Daisy groaned in recognition, glaring at her friends

“ _Down came the rain, and washed the spider out._ ”

“Not again! The very hungry caterpillar was bad enough!” she complained as half the kitchen burst out laughing

“ _Out came the sunshine and dried up all the rain”_

“What is it with you two and kids stuff???” Daisy complained, as Coulson and the Avengers (traitors!) started chuckling too.

“ _And itsy bitsty spider climbed up the spout again_ ” the song finished. Daisy grabbed the phone off Simmons before she could start it again, fingers flying over the screen as she deleted (and prevented it from being re-downloadable for good measure) the song. Coulson, a teasing expression fixed on his face started humming from across the kitchen and Daisy fought the urge to hit her head against the table. That was going to be all over the base by lunchtime, she just knew it. 

Mercifully (for Daisy anyway) everyone’s attention was diverted by a sudden and familiar yell coming from the direction of the mens bunks.

“Hunter’s up” observed Mack wryly as another yell came through the walls, followed by some impressive cursing followed by

“What the bloody hell’ve you done to my bunk???”

Daisy and FitzSimmons collapsed laughing, and Daisy pulled her own phone out of her pocket, fingers dancing over the screen as she accessed the camera she’d left in Hunter’s bunk. She took one look at the screen – featuring Hunter struggling across his room, tangled in silly string and with foam running down his face and neck, an egg cracked over his head and dripping down his left ear – and lost it completely, leaning weakly against the table as her stomach started to ache with laughter.

Fitz of course grabbed the phone, his own laughter increasing as he started passing it around the room, the footage backed up by the yells still trickling through the base.

“Oh, that’s a good one” Coulson said, an edge of pride in his laughter as he looked at Daisy. May took the phone off Coulson without taking an eye off the cooker, where pancakes were already cooking. She glanced at the screen and passed it on again, her mouth twitching in the only sign of amusement they were going to get from her. 

“How’d you manage it?” she just asked

“A little bit of modified silly string” Fitz said grinning

“Some basic delayed-reaction foam” Simmons added

“Sophie helped” Daisy said, answering the question of how they’d managed to get in without alerting the (very wary of retaliation since Halloween) former mercenary. 

“Good practice at infiltration” was all May said in response, but Daisy read both the amusement and praise in the comment and flushed. 

“I need coffee” said a voice from the kitchen doorway, and Daisy looked up to see that Hunter (his vest, shorts and well, most of the rest of him now covered in silly string, foam and egg) had made it out of his bunk. 

“Morning mate” Daisy said, voice as innocently-not-innocent as she could make it.

Hunter glared at her, then “Alright, we’re even now yeah. I can stop looking over my shoulder for you three?”

‘you three’ cracked up laughing again (not helped by the fact that Coulson was actually taking photos – he always did, Daisy suspected he had a scrapbook somewhere, although the director denied it vigorously) but Daisy nodded “Yeah, we’re even. For now.”

\--------------

Breakfast at the Playground it seemed, could be just as insane as breakfast at Avengers tower. Which was saying something given Tony had a habit of running in after sleepless night babbling about a new invention, often with said invention in tow; Clint often accessed breakfast by dropping down from the air ducts (or just firing an arrow at a stack of toast and pulling on the attached string); Pepper usually came chasing after Tony going on about something or other at 90 miles an hour; Thor never seemed to have gotten the message that he was utterly incapable of cooking; and even Natasha knew that her habit of throwing knives at anyone who wound her up too much before 9am didn’t help the general chaos. Bruce, Steve and Sam just stayed well clear of the communal kitchen in the mornings.

The insanity at the Playground at least seemed to be overseen and limited by Coulson and May, the latter of which sent Hunter off to shower with a mug of coffee in each hand. Calm then more or less returned (albeit with the  occasional giggle, and a promise from her Pauchok to Agent Morse to send her the footage) and May kept cooking pancakes. Which Natasha was definitely not annoyed about, even if it was  _ her _ kid May had beaten her too cooking for. 

The news that May was leaving after breakfast and she had her Pauchok to herself to train did however appease her, not that she’d been annoyed, because she hadn’t. Daisy said goodbye to May and Coulson when she’d finished eating, saying she was going to go down to the Cocoon to check in with her caterpillars (and share the results of the prank with Sophie went unsaid). Natasha and Clint saw the agents off in the hanger twenty minutes later. 

“If you’re not back by evening - I’ll see you when I come visit Nat in a week or so.” Clint said to Coulson “Don’t disappear for two years again or we’ll hunt you down.”

Aware that Hawkeye wasn’t joking (and that the shock of Daisy had gotten him off most of the yelling he had expected from when the pair finally found out) Coulson nodded seriously “I’ll be here, or coming back soon anyway” he promised, and turned to give Nat a hug too before following his second into the plane.

\-----------

Half an hour later, Natasha stood across the mat from Daisy, Clint a reassuring presence somewhere behind her, even engaged as he currently was with sparring both Hunter and Mack (Bobbi was watching wistfully from the side) at the same time. Her Pauchok was wearing gauntlet like gloves on her hands and arms, and explaining that they braced her lower arm and wrist and reduced the force her own body had to deal with from the tremours.

“You won’t always be able to grab them before a fight” she warned Daisy

“I train without them too” Daisy said, nodding to show she’d understood the warning. 

“Ok” Nat said awkwardly, trying to act like Daisy was just another junior agent (even though she hadn’t trained any junior agents since Hydra had come out into the open and SHIELD disappeared into the shadows) and this was just another training session. “lets get started then, show me what you’ve got.”

Daisy blinked “What, just like that?”

Nat felt her lips twitch “Try vibrating the muscles in my lower legs” she suggested.

“Uh, right, ok” Daisy said, pointing a hand at her and letting her face tighten in concentration as she reached for the right vibration. A few seconds later Natasha felt the strangest feeling she’d ever felt in her legs, like buzzing going all up her muscles, but gentler, smoother. She could immediately tell that it would make for a wonderful massage, but the offensive effect on her was rather...lacking. She tightened the muscles in her legs and the feeling faded to almost nothing. Daisy stopped sending the tremors a few seconds later.

“I don’t think I can make it any stronger” Daisy said “It’s like I can hear the vibration I need, but I can’t use it. That’s never happened before, it’s weird.”

Nat stopped a moment to think “Have you ever tried vibrating anything else living? That isn’t you?”

“Uh, Bobbi’s knee.”

“With her permission?”

“Of course!” Daisy said indignantly, then “Oh, you think its weaker if I try it without cooperation?”

Nat nodded “Try something else, can you vibrate the air around my legs?”

Daisy raised her hands again and did so, twin streams of distortions flying through the air and snapping around either side of Nat’s legs, pushing them together. She jumped up and out of the vibrations easily though, and Daisy had to stop and start quickly to try to grab her legs again, then again, then again, and while she struggled Nat worked her way quickly closer, finally getting close enough to swing a slow punch at Daisy, telegraphing the move. Daisy abandoned the attempt to trap her legs and shot a wave of tremors at her arm, sending her punch flying off course.

“Good” Nat said, stepping back. “Ok, so that experiment didn’t work. Never mind. What can you do?”

“Uh, quite a lot of stuff. I can throw people through the air, or pin them against the floor or wall.”

“Does it trap their arms?”

“No”

“Then it doesn’t neutralise the threat. What else?”

“I’m best at vibrating air in streams, I can use them to push myself up into flips or jumps, or to block bullets and stuff, and I’m working on flight. I can vibrate the floor or a wall hard enough to destroy it. Oh, I can vibrate guns until they fall apart. And I can make earthquakes, but those are kind of last resort.” Daisy listed, and Natasha raised an eyebrow, impressed, that was quite a lot she’d already worked out how to do with her power. There was one rather obvious thing to Nat that she hadn’t listed yet though. 

“If you can block bullets with vibrations can you block a punch.”

The look on Daisy’s face told Nat she hadn’t really thought about it. “I guess so, I’ve never tried.”

“We’ll try now then” Nat decided, stepping closer again. “I’m going to punch or kick you, I want you to block with your power, but you can’t retaliate. This is a training exercise, not sparring.”

“Copy that” Daisy said a little nervously, and dropped into a ready position, eyes scanning her body for any movement. Despite her quick acceptance of the order, Nat could tell her Pauchok was stressed, the extra tension in her body making her tight in places she should be loose. She felt her stomach tighten. What was she doing? She was the black widow! Of course Daisy would be scared of her. 

But Daisy needed training and May was out on mission so Nat swallowed back her uncertainty and started attacking slowly. Daisy met her first two blows with blocks, arm against arm, but managed to meet her third with a burst of vibrations, and then started to get the hang of it. Five minutes later Nat started upping the speed, surprised to find she was enjoying herself.

Was this how Clint felt teaching Cooper how to use his toy bow? Sharing something he was good at with his son, passing it down. Teaching him a new skill? Watching him get better and feeling a bubble of pride in his stomach?

She wouldn’t know, she’d never gotten to teach Daisy anything. Until now. Daisy was visibly settling into the exercise, her body and mind quickly getting the hang of quaking her blows out of the way, and a grin of exhiliration settling on her face. Natasha started adding in a few kicks, and moving around more, making the exercise more realistic, but Daisy kept up. May had trained her well.

Then suddenly Daisy missed a blow, the wave of tremours coming a second too late to prevent the punch from striking her in the solar-plexus, and all the breath left her body in a choked rush. Natasha stopped instantly, horror uncoiling inside her. She’d hit her. She’d hit her Pauchok. Her daughter.

Daisy stood there wheezing for a couple of seconds before she straightened, raising her arms to start again, but Nat didn’t move. What the hell was she doing? She could have hurt her! She’d promised to protect her! What was she even doing training Daisy, she’d sent half the junior agents she’d trained before to  _ medical _ ! She was a  **monster** , she shouldn’t be training anyone! Shouldn’t be  _ near _ anyone. 

“Mama?” 

It took a moment for her to hear what Daisy had just said, and another for it to sink into her brain, and then she felt every muscle in her body freeze.  _ Mama. _ Daisy had called her mama. Daisy had called the black widow mama. No. She couldn’t have. The black widow couldn’t be called mama.  _ She _ couldn’t be called mama. She’d killed and tortured and destroyed, she couldn’t, couldn’t be called mama. Mama meant love, and trust, and good things. It meant everything Natasha wasn’t. Mama wasn’t lists of the dead in her mind. Mama wasn’t a ledger dripping red with blood. She couldn’t be mama. She was a monster, Daisy couldn’t have just called her mama, she  _ couldn’t _ ! She was a monster and a murderer! She shouldn’t even be anywhere near Daisy!

“ _ **Natasha!**_ ” 

She heard the Clint’s shout behind her before she even realised she was half-way to the door. She heard the crash of the door slamming behind her before she even realised she was  ignoring it and keeping on running. There was muffled shouting behind her but Nat barely heard it, her feet carrying her past blurring walls and up the stairs, up and up and up until she burst out into the highest level, then on until the Playgrounds walls fell away and frost-covered ground crunched beneath her trainers, trees blurring around her as she ran and ran and ran.

\------------

Daisy had thought it was going well. It  _ had _ been going well. She’d been getting the hang of the quake blocking, and enjoying how the new blocks didn’t hurt the way it did when she absorbed the momentum with her arms. She’d been enjoying the training, having fun even, when it had suddenly gone downhill so fast she could barely process it. She’d missed a hit and lost her breath, and her mama had frozen, and Daisy  _ hadn’t meant to _ ! It had just slipped out. 

It had slipped out and Natasha’s face had gone so  _ blank _ and then she’d run and Daisy was so  _ stupid! _ Of course the Black Widow didn’t want to be her mama! She’d only known her for three days! Of course she didn’t want someone as messed up as Daisy! She was so  _ stupid _ . She shouldn’t have let the woman in, she shouldn’t have gotten attached. She  _ knew _ that was the fastest way to get sent back, she  _ knew _ that. She was such an idiot, reading into things just because she wanted a family, asking for more because she was  _ stupid  _ and  _ childish _ and now she’d lost it all and....

“Daisy? Are you ok?”

Bobbi was standing in front of her, her face concerned.

“Fine” Daisy answered, because her eyes were stinging with tears and she was so _stupid_ and she didn’t want to talk about it and she _hadn’t meant to_ and now Natasha was going to send her back and...

“You don’t look fine. Talk to me Daisy.” Bobbi said.

“I’m fine” Daisy repeated, her eyes burning. “I’m going to, uh, go put my gloves away” she said, turning towards the locker room door. 

“ _Daisy_...” Mack said from behind her, but she didn’t stop, half-running towards the door even as the other gym door burst open again and Clint reappeared from chasing after his partner. “Daisy wait!” sounded from behind her, but she was already running, tears blurring her vision. Why couldn’t she have kept her fucking mouth shut? 

\----------------

By the time Natasha finally slowed to a stop, she had no idea where she was. Her muscles were burning and her lungs aching with lack of air, the sounds of the forest drowned out by the buzzing in her ears.  _ Mama  _ Daisy had called her. Mama. But the consequences of her panic run were beginning to sink in. Shit. This wasn’t Clint pushing her to talk about the Red Room she’d run from. This wasn’t Coulson asking why she’d knocked out three doctors in medical and traumatised a fourth. She looked back on the last few moments in the gym, saw again the sudden panic on Daisy’s face, then the way it had begun to crumble in a blur as she spun towards the door.

Fuck. The look on her Pauchoks face in that moment. Fuck.

But,  _ mama _ , Daisy had called her mama. She felt a smile tug slightly at her face, even as nausea sparked in her gut. Pauchok had called her  _ mama!!!!! _ She shook herself. She shouldn’t feel good about this. She didn’t deserve to feel good! She didn’t deserve her daughter! What was she  _ thinking _ ? She shouldn’t have tried to get to know her Pauchok, she was a murderer, not a mother! Her ledger was stained red with innocent blood, Daisy was better off without her. But she’d wanted to know her baby so much. She’d wanted to hold her, hear about her life, know everything about her. And  _ mama _ . Pauchok had called her  _ mama!  _ How could one word sound so terrifying and so wonderful all at once?

But the  _ look _ on her daughter’s face when she’d bolted. 

She sank down to the ground at the base of a tree, dropping her head into her hands. She’d fucked up. She’d fucked up so, so bad. 


	9. Chapter 9

Daisy didn’t stop in the locker room, just ran straight through and disappeared into the base. She kept going until she found herself suddenly in Coulson’s office, and then she abruptly remembered that Coulson was gone on a mission. And so was May. The realisation was the last straw, and the tears flowed, pouring down her face and shaking her body with their force. She curled up on Coulson’s sofa, pulling the blanket off the back and burying her face in it as she cried. 

Why had she let Natasha in? Of course the Avenger didn’t want her, why would she? She’d just wanted to get to know her a bit and, and now she was going to send her back and she was going to have to leave again and she was so happy here and... no, wait. She was an adult. And an employee. Natasha couldn’t send her away. And Coulson and May never would. But Coulson and May weren’t  _ here _ and she  _ wanted  _ them and they were gone and she wanted her mom and she wanted her dad but they weren’t really her mom and dad and she wanted her  _ mama _ but her mama didn’t want her!

“Hey kid, can I come in?” 

Daisy slowly pulled her head of of the blanket, still crying, to see that the office door was open and Clint had stuck his head around it. She felt her cheeks burn red but nodded miserably, and the Avenger came the rest of the way in, shutting the door behind him and going to sit on the couch next to her. 

“I’m sorry.” the Avenger offered, and Daisy gave a hysterical sounding hiccup. 

“What for?”

“For my partner being an idiot” Hawkeye said matter-of-factly, and held his arms out in silent offer for a hug. 

Daisy debated with herself for a second, then sat up and moved into it, letting her uncle wrap her in his arms and make soothing noises as she worked on reducing her tears to sniffles. Finally, she pulled away, sure her face was scarlet with embarrassment.

“You don’t have to do this you know” she said. 

“Of course I do. You’re family” Clint said, shaking his head in firm denial. 

“N’m not” Daisy said, trying to pretend her throat wasn’t still thick with tears. Clint sighed.

“Nat loves you, she wouldn’t have run if she didn’t.” 

Daisy scoffed, unable to stop the sound passing her lips, bitter with hurt.

“She does.” Clint said “Nat, Nat’s not good at dealing with her feelings. Nor am I to be honest, but Nat’s worse. And she has a bad habit of running from her feelings instead of dealing with them. It doesn’t mean she’s running from you.”

“I called her mama. I called her mama an’ she _left._ ” Daisy said, her voice shaking. 

“Oh.” said Clint “Shit. I’m sorry.”

“It’s ok.” Daisy said “She doesn’t have to want me.”

“Its not ok” Clint disagreed, “and she does want you. Of course she wants you.”

“T-then why did she run away?”

Clint sighed, pulling her back into the hug. She resisted for a moment, then let herself relax against him as he started talking.

“Daisy, Nat was only two years out of the KGB when we went to Hunan. And when she went into that house – Shit, I’d never heard her scream like that before. Haven’t since either, and we’ve been through some shit-storms together. She came out of that house with a photo she wouldn’t let me see and a face so pale I thought she’d been shot. And when we got back to base she drank so much I think she’d have poisoned herself if she hadn’t puked so much of it back up, and when I made her stop drinking she started taking suicide missions. Kept taking them until I threatened to follow her on them and die with her. She stopped, but I don’t think she ever really dealt with it. Daisy, your death tore her apart. She loves you kid.”

“but” Daisy said in a small voice “but I called her mama, and she _left_!”

Clint’s arms tightened around her “and I’ll kick her ass for it.” he promised, before saying more gently “Nat has fight or flight instincts. She panicked.” he hesitated then “You know, I have a daughter too. A little girl called Lila.”

Daisy stirred, interested “How old is she?”

“She’s 4. We named Natasha godmother. Nat said we should pick someone else but we ignored her. The first time Nat held her she just stood there, looking down at Lila, for almost half an hour, then she handed her back to me and vanished. I found her three hours later on the roof of the barn, staring into thin air and crying like nothing I’d ever seen before. Then she left for five months without saying goodbye. Laura was _furious_.”

“Five months!” Daisy gasped, her chest suddenly tight, even as she cursed herself for it. She didn’t need her mother. She was 26! 

Clint tightened his hug again “I’m not letting her vanish this time. And I don’t have a newborn to look after to stop me from hunting her down and kicking her ass back to base. Besides, I’m pretty sure she’ll come back on her own even if I don’t follow her. ”

“She’s the Black Widow, you can’t kick her ass” Daisy pointed out, but she felt a lot better.

Clint huffed “I’m Hawkeye!” he protested with so much indignation that Daisy found herself laughing aloud.

“That’s better” Clint said with satisfaction. “Now, why don’t you go play with your caterpillars for a few hours while I track down my idiot of a partner?”

“I don’t play with the caterpillars, I train them!” Daisy protested “You make it sound like we’re five!” But she got up and wiped her eyes. 

Clint waved a hand “Any kind of training that involves superpowers and flying is playing in my book.”

Daisy huffed, then squealed in protest as Clint ruffled her hair, scrambling out the door to escape and go find her fellow inhumans.

\----------------

Nat sat on a bench at the side of a duckpond, idly flinging stones into the water, ignoring the disapproving looks that  passer-bys were sending her. She’d walked through the woods for hours before she’d found a road, then followed that road aimlessly for hours more. When she’d finally found a town she’d gone for the nearest bar, only to remember she had no money on her. She wasn’t in the mood to drink and flee. And she wasn’t sure she’d stop drinking if she started. So she’d sat down. And then she’d done nothing. She had no idea how to fix this. 

She may not know a whole lot about being a parent, but she had learned  _ something _ by osmosis from Clint and Laura, and she knew that this was  _ bad. _ Laura. Oh fuck, Laura was going to kill her six ways to Budapest. And she didn’t even know Daisy existed yet! Why. Why couldn’t she have kept calm and freaked out later? She’d disarmed dirty bombs seconds away from exploding without panicking! She’d been in more firefights than she could begin to count and she couldn’t remember freaking out like that in any of them. This was ridiculous! It was just a word!

But it wasn’t. Mama wasn’t just a word. It was acceptance and trust and  _ love _ . For the Black Widow! For a monster! She’d killed people. Innocent people. Back in the Red Room and in the KGB she’d killed without remorse, numb to it all. Fired bullets without hesitation, sliced knives until her hands and arms were drenched in lifeblood. Her ledger was stained red, and no matter how many lives she’d saved as an agent of shield, no matter how many crises she’d averted, wars she’d prevented, terrorists she’d caught, gangs she’d dismantled, the red in her ledger would never, ever go away. Not for Natasha. 

Daisy, her little Pauchok. She’d wanted something better for Daisy. She hadn’t just left her baby in Hunan to protect her from the Red Room. She’d left her there to protect Daisy from herself. From the woman who left a newborn in a basket to slit throats and put bullets in heads. From the woman who’d almost gotten her baby girl shot. From the woman who was numb and lost and completely, utterly broken. She’d left Daisy there to protect her from the Black Widow, from Natalia Romanova. Somewhere along the way she’d forgotten that.

Could she do it now? Could she walk away from Daisy to keep her safe? Could she do it? Do it with the memory of how it had carved her to pieces the first time. Do it with the memory of the white hot grief that had consumed her in that ransacked house? Do it when she’d found her baby girl again, when she’d gotten to talk to her child, gotten to see the way she’d grown, hear her laugh, hold her as she cried? Could she do it? Was it even the right thing to do anymore?

Coulson clearly didn’t think so. Clint didn’t think so. She was pretty sure Laura wouldn’t think so. She wondered what Daisy would think. Would Daisy still want to know her? Would she ever call her mama again? Natasha didn’t know. She didn’t know and she didn’t even have the first idea of how to fix this. She was an Avenger. As far as the world was concerned she was one of the most skilled women alive. But this, this was beyond monsters and magic and it was still nothing she’d ever been trained for. 

Compromised didn’t even begin to cover this.

\---------

The mid-day sun had risen to its height and started to fall by the time Clint dropped heavily onto the bench beside her. Natasha couldn’t say she was really surprised. She didn’t say anything, just threw another stone into the water with a dismal splash. 

“You made Daisy cry” Clint said, and the four words hurt more than Natasha had imagined any words could. 

Clint was angry. Natasha could tell that. She could always tell, even when he tried to hide it, and he wasn’t trying now. He was pissed and he wanted her to know. She let her head drop into her hands, elbows braced on her knees. Stared unseeing at the ground between her feet.

Clint paused, let the silence lengthen around them, full of unsaid words. He leaned back on the bench, shuffled closer until Nat could lean her shoulder against his side. When he finally spoke his tone was much gentler.

“Nat, you can’t stay out here forever. You have to make it right.”

“I can’t Clint.”

“Yes you can Nat, you can.”

“There’s no making this right Clint.” she hated how small her voice sounded, how hopeless. 

“Maybe” her partner said “maybe not. But I think Daisy will understand. You have to try Nat. For your sake as much as hers.”

Nat shook her head, voice bleak with despair “I made her  _ cry _ Clint.”

“You think I haven’t made Coop or Lila cry?”

“That’s different,” Nat disagreed “you’ve snapped at them during bad days. You haven’t run off after they called you dad for the first time! She’s never going to forgive me.”

Clint sighed, and Nat felt it vibrate through her body. Silence fell again, and they sat staring out over the duckpond, almost deserted in the weekday afternoon.

“Nat, you remember what you told me that time I hit Laura?”

Natasha hesitated, but she did remember, and Clint knew she did “I said it was stupid to decide what Laura thought when you hadn’t spoken to her since running off. But thats not the same! You had a flashback and she tried to wake you up. It was an accident.”

“No, its not the same” Clint agreed “but it’s not entirely different either. We both ran into a shitty piece of our past, hurt the people we love, and ran off. And you know, its just as stupid to assume what Daisy thinks as assuming what Laura thought.”

Nat took a shuddering breath in, let it fill her body as Clints words filled her mind. This wasn’t hitting someone before coming out of a flashback. She’d freaked out yes, but she knew better than to run when she panicked. Coulson and Hill and even Fury had taught her and Clint better than that. Laura had had more than a few things to say on the topic as well. She’d managed not to bolt when Cooper had whispered a sleepy ‘I love you’ after a bedtime story one night. She’d managed not to run when Lila had said it with a hug another morning. She’d managed not to run before. She’d let herself run this time.

“I don’t know how to fix this” she admitted, the confession hollow with fear. 

“You could start by apologising.” Clint suggested “And by explaining.”

“What if it’s not enough?”

“Then you wait and apologise again later. Nat, Daisy isn’t the kind of girl to hold a grudge. She’ll forgive you.”

“She shouldn’t. I don’t deserve it.”

“Natasha...” Clint said, and Nat heard the unspoken words in her name. The words that had been spoken so many times there was no need to say them. _You’re not a monster Nat. You deserve good things Nat. Your ledger is clean Nat. You’re a good person._

And on a certain level, she knew he was right, or at least partly right. But on other levels, she wasn’t sure she’d ever believe he was right. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to leave Natalia Romanova completely behind. Wasn’t sure the ghost of who she’d been before she’d surrendered to Clint and shield would ever fully go away.

“Come on.” is all she says, standing up “I’ve got red in my ledger and we’ve got a long walk before I can try and wipe it out.” It’s a surrender or sorts. A passive agreement with what Clint hasn’t needed to say, and Clints hand in hers as they walk is the silent understanding that this is the best Nat can do right now. 

And then, just at the edge of the town, Natasha saw a sign in a house window and had an idea. It wasn’t an apology, but, maybe it could be the start of one...

\----------

It was dark by the time they got back to the Playground, and all the quinjets were back in the hanger. Nat remembered with a pang of guilt that Clint had meant to leave that afternoon. May was waiting for them by the main exit to the hanger, her face a study in blankness, but Natasha could see the  absolute  fury hidden at the edges of the expression. She swallowed, suddenly realising that Daisy wasn’t the only one on the Playground she was going to have to make things right with. 

“May, I..” she started, but cut herself off as May moved.

There was a second, between May moving and the action completing, in which Natasha realised the agent was about to punch her and chose not to move. Her old friends fist collided hard with her jaw and she rocked back on her heels to absorb the force of it, careful not to jostle the box in her hands.

“Ow” she said, acknowledgement of the punch because May deserved to know she’d succeeded in hurting her, then “I deserved that.”

“Yes, you did.” May snapped “Want to tell me what you were _thinking_.”

“I think I owe Daisy that explanation first.” Nat said, resisting the urge to rub her jaw in response to the pain throbbing through her mouth. 

“If you think I’m letting you anywhere _near_ Daisy...” 

Nat swallowed back her first retort that May couldn’t hold her back for long. ‘ _ This changes nothing’ _ she’d said. If Nat wanted any chance of Daisy forgiving her, and of continuing to have a part in her life, she needed May’s blessing. 

“May, please.” she hesitated a moment, her pride warring with her need to see Daisy, “I know I fucked up. Let me try and make this right.” 

“And if Daisy doesn’t want to listen?”

“Then I’ll leave her alone.” Nat promised.

May hesitated, her face tight, before finally turning to Coulson, standing to the side. Nat turned to follow May’s eyes and caught Coulson looking at her, the disappointment in his eyes so much worse than the pain in her jaw.

“She’s in the gym.” Coulson said by way of answer. “You can ask.”

“Thank you” she said, and meant it. She was halfway down the corridor a mere second later, feeling ridiculously scared for something that wasn’t even going to involve bullets. 

“Oh, and Romanoff?” Coulson said pleasantly behind her. “Next time I won’t let you back on my base.”

Nat stopped, swallowed hard, turned and nodded. Message received.

\--------------

Daisy was working with a punching bag when she arrived, her face glistening with sweat as she kicked and punched the bag, alternating in quake punches. The only sign that she’d noticed Nat’s arrival was the hitch in her heavy breathing.

“Umm, can I talk to you?” Natasha asked awkwardly. 

Daisy shrugged without stopping “If you want.” she said, her voice a study of unconcern, but Nat didn’t need to be the black widow to hear the pain beneath it. She felt, if possible, even worse.

“I’m sorry.” she offered, the words painfully inadequate. 

“What for?” Daisy asked, voice so flat even Natasha could barely read anything from it. 

She swallowed hard, her throat dry even though her eyes ached with tears she refused to shed “For earlier” she said, not quite able to make herself say it.

Daisy finally abandoned the punching bag and spun to face her, her face some cross between angry and broken, eyes still red from crying. “You  _ left _ .”

“I know.” Natasha said “I’m sorry.” she repeated.

“That’s it? You’re sorry? Y-you _left_ me.” Daisy said, and Nat realised she preferred the feeling of being beaten up and tortured to how she felt watching tears well up in her Pauchok’s eyes, knowing they were her fault. ‘ _You left me_.’

“I don’t...there’s no excuse. I never...I didn’t mean...I’m sorry Pauchok.” Her own eyes were burning with the force of the tears she refused to shed. She couldn’t meet her daughter’s eyes anymore, and she let her chin drop, feeling defeat creep up on her. She held the box out, “I got you this in the town.” she said instead, for once the one who found the silence unbearable. 

“I thought you told me that buying someone stuff doesn’t make it ok.” Daisy said, the words hard as bullets.

“It doesn’t” Nat said, the lesson too important to ignore, even if it didn’t help her case any. “It’s an apology. Or, or the start of one at least.”

The box shifted in her hands, apparently finally waking up, and Daisy’s eyes grew wide, momentarily forgetting everything else “Is there something alive in there?”

Nat held the box out again silently, and Daisy took it, lowering herself to sit cross legged on the ground as she worked the cardboard box open, undoubtedly not missing the air holes in it. Nat watched her face transform from angry and hurt to what could only be described as ‘Awwwwww’ in seconds, and her Pauchok’s hands reached into the box to lift out the sleepy tabby kitten.

“They were up for adoption in town” Nat said “Clint’s got some food for him upstairs.”

“Him?” Daisy asked distractedly, her attention mostly taken up by the kitten investigating her fingers. 

“Yeah” she said. The kitten butted its head against Daisy’s fingers and Nat watched Daisy melt and had the absurd desire for a camera. 

“This doesn’t make it ok” Daisy warned distractedly, one hand gently stroking the tabby.

“Its not meant to.” Nat said, sitting down opposite her daughter. “Made you smile though.” she said, the truth of the statement easing something inside her, just slightly. Daisy looked up at her and Nat saw something in her face loosen a little and realised somehow, she’d done something right. 

“Thank you.” Daisy said, then “May’s going to kill you though.”

“On the list of things May wants to kill me for right now, I don’t think giving you a pet is going to be that high.” she pointed out, firmly stopping the instinct to rub her still aching jaw. 

\---------------

Daisy had, despite the start, not had a completely terrible day. Mack had gone to look for her in the Cocoon, and mentioned something to her caterpillars, so when she’d gone down to the Cocoon after talking with Uncle Clint, they’d closed in around her like talking inhuman shields. They’d trained (it was  _ not  _ playing thank you very much.) for a few hours, messing around with their powers and sparring, and Ben had made her comfort food for lunch. The board games after lunch had devolved into a pillow fight through a series of events that made perfect logical sense if you didn’t think too hard about it. The pillow fight had been followed by more training, then Mack had come down to tell her that May and Coulson were back, and wanted to know if they could come down. 

Daisy had gone up instead, and Coulson had wrapped her in a warm hug and apologised for not being there, even though he was on mission and that was silly. May had made her hot chocolate and neither had made her talk about it, but in a way that gave the silent impression of ‘when you’re ready, we’re here.”.

But Daisy didn’t really know what she thought about Natasha running off, even most of a day later. Clint said Natasha loved her, had said it like it was fact not possibility. But she’d left Daisy, just like everyone else always had, sending her back like she’d never been a part of the family.

But then Nat had brough t her a kitten, something that would undoubtedly  _ not _ endear herself to May, just to make her smile, and Daisy could almost believe that Nat really did love her. 

“Thank you” she said “May’s going to kill you though.”

“On the list of things May wants to kill me for right now, I don’t think giving you a pet is going to be that high.” Natasha said, her voice wry, and Daisy wondered if she’d already seen May. If she’d run into her coming back.

“Why did you leave?” she asked, eyes still on the kitten because she just didn’t have the courage to look at Natasha as she asked. 

“I, it’s, it’s complicated” Natasha replied, sounding so lost for a moment that Daisy realised the assassin had no idea what she was doing just then.

“I’m listening” she said instead, watching Natasha out of the corner of her eye as the Assassin dropped her gaze to the mat covered floor of the gym, her face blank but her eyes whirlpools of emotion. 

N atasha hesitated for several seconds, the black widow struggling to work out what to say, and what finally came out of the red-heads mouth was “I’m the Black Widow.”

Daisy blinked “I know” she said, confused.

Natasha’s hands found the edge of her  sweatpants and fiddled, a tell of discomfort she rarely allowed herself. “It, it was all I could think of, when you, when you called me” there was a beat of silence before the assassins mouth managed to form the word “mama.”

Daisy ran a hand over the kittens back, internally cooing at the softness even as she focused on her mother. “I don’t understand” she said, and she didn’t. What did being an Avenger have to do with the woman leaving her? Was she not good enough for the international agent? Did she not want her because of it? Daisy felt her breath catch despite herself, despite having spent the day trying to convince herself she didn’t  _ care _ what this woman thought about her. But when her mother continued her tone wasn’t dismissive, but anguished, possibly more open than she’d ever seen the woman. 

“Daisy, I’m the _Black Widow_. You’ve read my file, you know what, what I’ve done, what I am.”

Daisy frowned, shocked at the words and the virulence in them “You’re an Avenger” she said.

“I didn’t use to be.” Natasha said, her eyes looking anywhere but at Daisy, and Daisy suddenly realised this was the most vulnerable she’d ever seen her mother. She had the uncomfortable feeling that what she said now could break the woman.

“It doesn’t matter who you used to be. You’re an Avenger now.” Daisy said, and she meant it. 

“I killed people Pau..Daisy, a lot of people. It matters. I’m not someone you should call mama. I, I shouldn’t even be anywhere near you. I’m sorry, you were happy, I should have left you be. I’m sorry.”

Daisy had been rejected a lot in her life. She’d been sent back enough times that she’d stopped believing in the idea of a forever home before she reached double-digits. She’d had ‘parents’ tell her she wasn’t good enough to join their family, tell her she was trouble, tell her they didn’t want her. She’d been told she wasn’t ‘a good fit’ more times that she wanted to think about. She’d been moved from family to family and seen the way foster parents pretended they were sorry as they sent her back. She’d seen the pretence in their sad faces as they said goodbye and felt it cut deeper into the emptiness inside her. 

Natasha’s face wasn’t like that. Natasha’s face transformed as she spoke, settling into lines of sincerity, everything in her body language telling Daisy that she meant what she said, that she was sorry she’d gotten to know Daisy. 

And Daisy knew,  _ knew _ from the very lack of everything but sincerity on the spy’s face that the words were carving the woman open in ways Daisy couldn’t imagine.  That Natasha meant it. She meant that she was sorry she’d gotten to know Daisy,  really and truly meant it,  but she was sorry because she wanted what was best for Daisy and she wasn’t it. 

“Uncle Clint’s right” she said. 

“What?” Nat said, startled. That hadn’t been quite what she’d expected in response to the confession. 

“You are an idiot.” Daisy said “And, and you really do care.” she finished, her voice small and quiet, but she felt something settle inside of her as she said it, as she felt the truth of it. Some long jagged edge inside herself softened, the sharp edge of the internal wound smoothing; some hope snuffed out in cars back to St Agnes and rekindled by May and Coulson burning brighter, stronger. 

“Daisy” Natasha said, voice rough with some emotion Daisy couldn’t name “of course I care. But I still shouldn’t have, have” her voice choked off, and Daisy was stunned to see the assassins eyes were glassy. “Daisy, I’m a monster, not a mother.” the woman said finally, her fingers clenched so tightly in her sweats her skin was completely white.

Daisy hesitated, feeling lost, then she scooped up the tabby kitten gnawing on her finger and deposited it on the black widows lap. “You’re not a monster, you’re the woman who got me a kitten to make me smile. And whose saved uncountable lives as an agent of Shield, never mind an Avenger.” she added, almost as an afterthought. 

Natasha’s face, far more open that night than Daisy had seen it before, looked briefly startled at the ball of fur she suddenly gained. “ But I’m...” the woman said.

“I don’t care” Daisy said, and she meant it.

“You should.” Natasha insisted

“That my mama is an Avenger? Is the coolest spy ever? Goes to work and saves the world? Ok, yeah, I should care.” Daisy said insistently, shamelessly twisting the spy’s words around. 

Natasha’s breathing hitched slightly as Daisy said the m-word, but something  seemed to change a little in her posture, some give, some surrender in her body language. “You sound like Clint.”

“Good” Daisy said “Uncle Clint is smart.”

“Don’t let him hear you say that, I’ll never hear the end of it.” Natasha joked weakly and Daisy laughed.

A  silence fell between them, filled only intermittently by the kittens mewing, but Daisy found it was a comfortable silence, relaxed as they gathered themselves. Eventually Natasha spoke. 

“I’m sorry Pauchok. I’m so sorry for running. You asked why I left and the truth is I just panicked. I, I have no idea what I’m doing, how to be, be a parent. I was trained to never care, never let myself be compromised and now, I have no idea how to do this Daisy. I have no idea and I freaked out and I’m sorry.”

Daisy watched Nat’s hands stroke the kitten (she should probably name it) and found herself saying “I don’t know how to do this either. I, I used to dream about finding my parents, about what it would be like. I have to admit, gaining superpowers and having my dad try to kill me wasn’t really what I expected. None of this was what I expected, but I’m still glad it happened, because it brought us here. I don’t know much about family either, but I’m still glad to have one.”

Natasha’s face did a sort of  _ thing _ where it twisted in sadness and happiness all at once. “What, what did you think about when you thought of finding your parents? Umm, if I can ask that.” 

Daisy shrugged “Stupid stuff mostly.” she said, feeling her cheeks heat with embarrassment “That I was stolen from my parents, or they wanted me back and couldn’t find me or something. That they’d be so happy to have me back and we’d be some cliché fairy tale family. They’d read me bedtime stories and walk me to school and help me with my homework and stuff.  They’d make me my favourite foods on my birthday and take me to the park in summer and ice-skating in winter.” She shrugged again “kids stuff.”

“Thats not stupid” Natasha said, her voice sad “You should have had all those things growing up. And more, so much more. I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

Daisy felt her eyes burn “You’re here now.” she said, and then “A-aren’t you?”

Natasha hesitated, fear crawling up her throat but, “Yeah, yeah I am. We can work it out can’t we? Together?”

“Together” Daisy agreed, her smile shaky but present. “We’ll work it out together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Daisy definitely has the most protective family on the planet.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sooo much fluff!

A nd, slowly, over the next few weeks they started to. 

May was unsurprisingly  _ not _ particularly pleased to hear that Natasha had introduced a pet to the Playground, but Daisy had been careful to introduce the kitten to FitzSimmons, Bobbi, Mack and Hunter on the way to go and ask May and Coulson if they could keep a cat on the spy base. By the time she reached the office, FitzSimmons had put on their best puppy dog expressions and Hunter was mesmerised with the little ball of fur. May, faced with the pleading expressions of all her junior agents and more than one of her older ones, caved. Fitz named the tabby Nutella, and despite several protests, the name stuck and Nutella became a permanent member of the Playground, complete with a little collar that tracked his movements and beeped warningly if he tried to enter the lab, gym, armoury or shooting range. 

FitzSimmons and the caterpillars were noticeably cool to Natasha for several days after she left and returned, despite the fact that she’d returned with Nutella, but as the days passed and Nat stuck around, and got into life on base, they slowly warmed up again. Natasha considered the  days of coolness from the team easier by far to deal with than the  half hour lecture she got from Coulson  that almost reduced her to tears, as much because of the understanding and sympathy the man offered as the scolding. May for her part sent Daisy off to train with the caterpillars as usual after lunch the first day and handed Nat several stacks of paperwork with a ‘make yourself useful’ and a smirk that said she remembered  _ exactly _ how much the super-spy hated paperwork. But the punishment at least kept her busy while her Pauchok trained the caterpillars and Nat took it silently, trying to mend bridges. She perceived, on the fifth day, when May handed her some intel to go through instead, that she’d at least mostly been forgiven. 

Life fell into a sort of pattern, as regular as life can be on a spy base with no one day having exactly the same jobs as another. The day started for Daisy with tai-chi with May, followed by breakfast (which always seemed to be cooked now, and she was pretty sure  _ something _ was going on with her mama  and her SO about it, but she wasn’t brave enough to ask) with whoever was up at the time. This was usually followed by either checking in with and giving brief training sessions to the caterpillars, or coding/hacking for intel. Mid-morning usually brought with it training, with either May or Natasha. Daisy wasn’t sure whether to be happy or not that she no-longer missed training when May needed to do something for Coulson. Her training had suddenly gotten significantly more intense as the black widow took an increasing hand in making sure she didn’t ‘die out there’ as Bobbi and Hunter put it. Lunch was usually followed by more work with the caterpillars, who were getting closer and closer to being a field-ready team, and increasingly taken to coming up to the main base to hang out with the other agents and learn by osmosis. The later afternoon was usually spent working on computer things with May or Coulson, digging deeper and deeper into Hercules, which was looking increasingly like it had passed being merely chatter some time ago. The evenings though, the evenings were spent with her mama. 

And Natasha was ‘mama’ now. Daisy had walked into the kitchen with May the morning after the assassin and left and returned and said “Morning Uncle Clint, morning mama” and tried not to sound like there was a question mark on the end of the greeting. Natasha had given a small, relieved smile, and replied “Morning Pauchok” and that had been that. 

Natasha didn’t get to see much of her daughter during the day, apart from morning training on the mornings she got her, but she kept busy around the base. She kept her promise of not going out to follow up intel for a few weeks, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a lot of work she still could do through social media, emails, phone calls and texts to keep an eye on various things that needed it and  watch out for signs of trouble in general. A lot of this turned out to actually be Shield work, as much of what Hill sent her - both of things to investigate and intel from elsewhere - had turned out to be from new Shield. Hill had clearly not left Shield  _ nearly _ as much as she’d led Tony to believe. Nat  of course thought t his was hilarious and didn’t bother to mention this to Tony when she checked in and chatted with the other Avengers.

The Avengers had, mostly, taken Clint’s news of Coulson’s not-actually-permanent death fairly well considering. They wanted to come visit, but Coulson had firmly shut down the idea, stating that he did not want the kind of attention the four less discrete Avengers would bring to the area around his top-secret base. In compromise however, he promised to visit Stark tower at some point in the next year, a decision that saved Nat from having to explain to 4 suddenly arriving Avengers that she had a daughter. She wasn’t sure Daisy was ready to deal with all the Avengers at once yet. Given the kind of strong personalities and corresponding powers that made up the Avengers, most people were never ready to deal with more than  _ one _ at once.

Nat knew she couldn’t avoid telling them forever, not least because the team were as much her family as Coulson’s were to Daisy, but she wanted to physically be there to tell them herself. It wasn’t really the kind of news you stuck in an email or casually mentioned at the end of a phone call.  Also, Nat  _ really _ wanted to be able to see Captain America’s face when she mentioned she had a daughter, and Starks face when that daughter turned out to be skyenet was sure to give her blackmail material for years if she could get it on camera. Thor was likely to get very over excited, Bruce would probably take it pretty calmly and say something about being happy for her, but Hill and Pepper’ s (part of the team even if technically not Avengers)  reactions would probably be interesting. Currently though, she hadn’t told anyone, although Clint had warned her that if she left it too long Laura would kill them both when they told her. 

Apart from doing remote spy work for both the Avengers and Shield, Nat let herself get more and more invested in training not only Daisy, but occasionally others. Her Pauchok was improving quickly, responding to both her and May’s increasingly difficult demands, although the number of bruises she usually left training with had also increased. Nat still felt something shudder inside her every time Daisy hit the floor or took a blow, but the shudder lessened just a little bit every time her Pauchok got up again or shook it off and Daisy’s ever increasing skill made it constantly that little bit less likely that she would one day not come home from a mission. And above all else, Nat was determined to do everything and anything she could possibly do to protect her baby girl. 

So even though attacking Daisy on the gym mats felt deeply, intrinsically  _ wrong _ to Natasha, she pushed her daughter every single training session. And even though Hill and Fury had had to threaten her with paperwork or bribe her in the past to train the junior agents, Nat willingly did (significantly easier) sessions with the caterpillars who wandered into the gym, and  spent several mornings making sure Mack was competent to watch Daisy’s six in the field. Mack put up with  it with much better humour than most agents Nat had known, going as far as to thank her for her help training the inexperienced caterpillars. Natasha found she rather liked the calm giant. He was the kind of man who wouldn’t panic in a crisis, and would be the voice of caution in planning a mission. She didn’t think she would ever really trust anyone to have her daughters back, but given it couldn’t be her, she was glad Mack was Daisy’s partner. 

So between training, spy work, hacking work and the other small tasks of the base, both Natasha and Daisy’s mornings and afternoons were invariable filled, but the evenings, the evenings were theirs. 

They didn’t always do something just them, there were game nights with the team with them all sprawled around the communal living room, board games scattered across tables and at least two people on the xbox at once, competing for second place (first place was consistently and unbeatab ly won by Daisy) in an ongoing tournament. There were movie nights in the same room, with a projector rigged up to turn the room into a mini-cinema and Bobbi and Hunter getting into a popcorn war until the movie ended and the whole thing devolved into a pillow fight. There were evenings just casually spent playing with Nutella  and several evenings spent hunched over a table with FitzSimmons trying to either undo some prank from Bobbi, Mack or Hunter or planning pranks to launch against them. 

But even when it was more than the two of them, there were little moments. Daisy’s questioning eyes across the table when a card game required partners, and a slight smile of excitement when Nat instantly  signalled an affirmative. Daisy tentatively leaning into her mama’s side as the movie started, and snuggling further and further in as it continued, melting into the feel of Nat’s hand brushing over her hair. Nat ma king hot chocolate from cocoa, milk and sugar rather than instant powder and br inging it to the meetings to plan pranking ‘ops’. 

But for both of them the most special evenings were they ones where it was just them. Sometimes they claimed some rarely frequented corner of the base, or hid in one of their bunks and  talked quietly. Nat told stories of Strike Team Delta missions and Avengers missions that hadn’t made it into her file (the ones that didn’t get her sent to mandatory counselling or forced into medical) and slowly teased childhood stories out of Daisy, even though more than one of them left Nat wanting to cry as much as she laughed. One story, about making an actual proper igloo in the back yard one very, very snowy winter made Nat laugh aloud until Daisy admitted to sleeping in it without her foster parents noticing and getting ill. Nat physically dr agged Daisy out to the kitchen for hot drinks and the rest of the evening was spent making a blanket fort in Daisy’s bunk with travel mugs of hot chocolate steaming on her chest of drawers. They sat in the fort drinking hot chocolate and eating biscuits Nat had stolen from the kitchen until Daisy’s eyes drooped and Nat sent her to shower and change despite her daughters protests that she wasn’t tired. Puppy-dog eyes from her Pauchok when she returned though found her caving not only to Daisy sleeping in the fort but also one last story. Nat told a story about her and Clint scaring the baby agents they were training in wilderness survival silly and neither of them mentioned the words bedtime story. 

A nother evening they inhaled an early supper and went out into the town. They fed the ducks at the duckpond in the evening light, and got ice-creams at the supermarket and wandered around the town, eventually finding themselves back in the now dark park. They sat on a bench by the duckpond and Nat taught Daisy how to French braid her hair and Daisy slowly, quietly told Nat about going through terrigenisis and what had followed on base, and then what happened on Afterlife, and what had gone down on the Ilyiad. Nat pulled her close on the dark bench and rubbed her back as Daisy talked about her dad having her knocked out and later trying to drain her life. She held back her own rage and made soothing sounds until Daisy’ s breaths evened out and she could finish the story by telling her about wiping her step-mothers mind and giving her a new life. 

On several evenings they wandered around the base with two sets of lock-picks as Natasha taught Daisy how to use them. Over the course of three consecutive evenings Nat taught Daisy about breaking and entering by practising on various parts of the base at night. They broke into Coulson’s office and on a hunch from Daisy searched it until Nat straightened with a victorious look on her face and Coulson’s scrapbook  (that  he kept denying existed ) in her hand. They took a selfie of them holding the scrapbook and a handful of lock-picks in his office and broke into the lab to print out the photo, adding it to the scrapbook and then putting everything back like they’d never been. Nat taught Daisy several dozen things about searching a spy’s room without leaving signs as they did so, and they replaced almost a dozen hairs in the exact spots  Coulson had left them in. It wasn’t until a  full week later (following Hunter and Bobbi managing to get some chemical Daisy couldn’t pronounce into her and FitzSimmons shower heads that dyed their skin blue. Simmons mixed something to neutralise the chemical and return them to normal but none of them escaped without having pictures taken) that Coulson came down to lunch looking distinctly embarrassed and told them he was confiscating the lock picks. 

On one particularly memorable evening the entire team (all dressed in civilian clothes and with several disguises and a back story about a computer company and team building) went ice-skating. Daisy almost went through the roof with excitement right up until they arrived at the edge of the rink and then she hung back, nervousness written on every line of her body and she admitted she’d never been before, despite begging several foster families to take her. Nat hung back while May and Coulson took a hand each and led her carefully onto the ice, murmuring reassurances and showing her how to lean forwards to balance. She waited almost half an hour, watching her Pauchok gain a little confidence on the ice before she judged she’d let May and Coulson have their ‘turn’ and stole her daughter off them and  showed her how to skate in a way only someone who grew up with Russian winters and sprint-skating across lakes (in training exercises that ended in broken bones and skate blades covered with blood as often as not, but Nat wasn’t going to tell Daisy that) could. By the end of the evening Daisy beat May in a skate-race and the combination of May’s stunned face and Daisy’s exhilarated, beaming one that Coulson managed to get on camera became one of Natasha’s favourite memories. Although she also resolved to hunt down and destroy every copy of the photo Coulson snapped of her feet flying out from under her as Daisy quaked her skates. 

\----------

And so October faded into November, which bled into December, bringing with it Christmas carols played around the base and  Christmas trees and tinsel appearing around the town. Nat finally couldn’t avoid or put off needing to investigate something herself and left on mission on the second, finding the information she needed, taking apart a cell of terrorists and getting out without anything more than bruises. When she called Clint on the flight back to report Laura picked up instead, and asked her to swing by the farm on her way back. 

It had been two years since either Clint or Laura had asked her to drop by the farm rather than asking if she was coming or if she had time to visit, and the last time had been to tell her face to face that Cooper had a fever of over 104 and could die. Coop had been fine, but the memory of it filled Nat with dread as she flew to the farm, landing the quinjet in the usual field and half running to the farmhouse. But when Laura met her at the door, there was no worry on her face, and waved Nat in without any sense of urgency and made her tea. 

“Is everyone ok?” she asked cautiously “Where are Clint and the kids?”

“Coops at school and Clint took Lila to feed the ducks.” Laura said, the natural warmth in her voice settling over Nat as it always did. “Why wouldn’t they be ok?”

Nat took the mug of tea off Laura, the tension easing from her shoulders “Well, the last time you asked me to come round like this...” she pointed out.

“Oh!” Laura said, her face suddenly guilt stricken “Oh, Nat I’m so sorry!”

Natasha waved the apology away, too relieved to care how worried she’d been on the flight over. “So what’s up then?” she asked casually. 

“Oh, well, why don’t you sit down” Laura said, one hand unconsciously moving over her stomach, and Nat’s eyes widened. 

“I think that might be a good idea” Nat conceded “You’re pregnant again aren’t you?”

Laura’s eyes widened, then “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised you worked it out so quickly. I’ve known you for long enough.” 

Nat smirked, sinking into a kitchen chair as she let the news settle in her mind. Laura was pregnant again. She was going to have another baby. Coop and Lila were getting another sibling. “How far along are you?” she asked.

“We think about 10 weeks, we haven’t told anyone else yet.” She hesitated a moment then said in a voice she usually only used on the kids when they _really_ weren’t behaving or her and Clint when they tried to interfere with her cooking “We’re naming him or her after you. And you’re not going to argue.”

Natasha gaped across the table at her unofficial sister-in-law, knowing that for an instant her face was a mask of stunned shock before she schooled her expression. She could tell from Laura’s face and voice that she was utterly serious, was not going to change her mind, and was fully prepared to defend the decision. Had in fact already prepared several arguments to shut down any protest Natasha might make. Had though t it through and decided and really, firmly decided that she was naming her child after Natasha and was not going to be moved. 

“I, thank you” she croaked, and Laura seemed to understand. She came around the table and gave Nat a hug, not saying anything and letting her process. She swallowed hard several times, worked past the lump in her throat and said “Actually, there’s something I should tell you too.”

Laura studied her face for a moment and then said “I’m going to want to be seated for this aren’t I?”

“Yeah” Nat agreed

“Should we wait for Clint?”

“He already knows. Said I should tell you myself.” Nat said, trying to work out what to say. 

Laura sat down in the chair next to her, and braced herself slightly. “Ok, I’m ready.”

Nat thought it said something a little sad about the kind of things she and Clint had had to tell Laura over the years, and what being the wife of on e of the Avengers was like. 

“It’s nothing bad” she said, then “I have a daughter.” she said bluntly. 

Laura’s jaw dropped open and she ga wped at Natasha like she’d just sprouted antlers “Say that again?” 

“I have a daughter” Nat repeated. 

Laura closed her mouth, visibly gathering herself. “Right,  ok then, right, when, uh, when did this happen? Adopted I assume given you visited us two months ago and you certainly weren’t pregnant then.”

“Umm, actually, she’s my biological daughter, and it happened 26 years ago.”

There was a beat of silence and then “ _ Natasha Romanoff!!  _ You’ve had a daughter the  _ entire _ time you’ve know us and you  _ never brought her round? _ Never even told us she  _ existed??? _ ”

Natasha, who had faced down guns and bullets and worse cringed  instinctively with learned fear at the face of Laura Barton’s wrath. 

“Hello Nat” said a dryly amused voice from where the door had just opened, followed by “ _Auntie Nat!!!_ ” and Natasha suddenly had an armful of delighted 4 year old. 

“I see Nat’s telling you about Daisy” Clint said to Laura, going to put the kettle on again, only to be blocked by his furious wife. 

“You _knew???_ ” 

Clint, who had learned to dread his fair,  usually  even tempered wife’s wrath  long before Nat had, held his hands out in hasty surrender “Only for a few weeks. I thought Nat should tell you herself.”

_ Thanks Clint _ Nat thought as Laura’s wrath turned back towards her. “It wasn’t like that” she said, putting Lila down and giving Clint a significant look. Her partner understood and held a hand out for the 4 year old, coaxing her upstairs with the promise of a story. Laura watched her go and most of the anger bled from her frame. 

“What don’t you want Lila to hear?” she asked, her voice back to its usual gentle warmth, but an undercurrent of resignation threaded it, the voice of a woman with a backbone of steel who already knew enough of her and Clint’s backgrounds to know that nothing good was coming.

“I thought she was dead” she said, and even though she knows Daisy is alive and well and thriving back at the Playground, and had known for weeks now, the memory of that day in Hunan still made her voice rough with remembered emotion, remembered agony. Laura reached a hand over to grab hers and squeezed tightly, silent empathy in her eyes, and Nat is grateful it isn’t pity. She’s never been able to deal with pity. She squeezed Laura’s hand back and gathered herself, summarising the story quickly before Clint can run out of things to distract Lila from demanding her aunt. 

Laura, who ha d heard plenty of stories of monsters and magic by this point, took the tale of hydra, dead and then not-dead inhumans, slaughtered villagers, powers and attempted war in stride, then ignore d the whole story in favour of asking for more information on Daisy. 

“What’s she like?” Laura asked eagerly, leaning forward as if that could get Natasha to tell her about her niece more quickly. 

“Pauchok’s, she’s, she’s perfect. She’s strong and brave and funny, and she’s been through so much but she still cares so much.” Nat said, feeling like her words were woefully inadequate to describe her Daisy. “She’s smart and kind and she loves pranks and she’s a better hacker than Stark.” 

The sound of thundering feet on the stairs cut Nat off from another attempt at describing her daughter and Laura sighed resignedly, knowing Lila was going to demand Nat’s attention in seconds. “You’d better bring her to Christmas.” she said, the words not  _ quite _ a threat but certainly a ‘I want to meet my niece soon or  there’ll be in trouble.’. 

Nat frowned “I don’t know what her plans are, I’ll have to ask Coulson what they all did last year.” and that was all she had time for before Lila was jumping up and down in front of her.

“Look Auntie Nat! Look what I made! _Look_!”

\---------------------------

Daisy, although she wasn’t sure she was ready to admit it, had missed her mama while she was gone on mission. Natasha had only been gone for a few days, but Daisy had missed her presence at breakfast, the kasha she made sometimes when May didn’t make it to the cooker first (there was  _ definitely _ something going on there, she was sure of it) and the time they spent together in the evening. 

It wasn’t that there was no one else to spend time with, because May and Coulson had taken advantage of her suddenly clear evenings to start teaching her Chinese. Daisy had been asking (and doing some self-studying in snatched free moments) to learn the language for months, since before Afterlife, even if the reason had more to do with her mom’s native language than her fathers. Daisy hadn’t realised how much she’d missed the occasional snatched evening with either May or Coulson to study something random or debrief on something randomer (which usually got set aside fairly quickly in favour of other activities) until she suddenly got them back. 

She was deeply grateful they’d given her the time and space to get to know her birth mother, but she’d still nervously asked if they could keep doing it sometimes, even when her mama was back, to practice Chinese of course. The twitch of May’s lips and open smile on Coulson’s face warmed her all the way to her core, and she knew there would be more regular evenings with her mom and dad. Her mama wouldn’t mind. Or, well, she wouldn’t begrudge Daisy the time with May and Coulson  anyway . Daisy was pretty sure she’d understand. 

But even if it had been wonderful to have more time to spend with her unofficial mom and dad, she’d missed her mama, and the base hadn’t felt quite the same without her, even if she’d only been an agent again for less than two months. Her mama had returned with two tubs of chocolate spread (the base got through the stuff with impressive speed and the bringer of more was always popular) and a leather jacket with the black widow’s red and black symbol on the back for Daisy. Her mama had handed her it casually, with a comment that there was _no way_ she was just letting bird-brain dress her in Hawkeye merchandise when _she_ was the coolest Avenger, and watched her open it out of the corner of her eye as if she didn’t care in the least what she thought about it. Daisy thought it was awesome and wore it around base whenever not training. Although she suspected the photo Coulson pretended he hadn’t taken of her wearing the supergirl pyjamas he’d given her, the black widow jacket and May’s slippers (pushed on her feet just before movie night started by her SO) was going to end up in the scrapbook. 

I t was two nights after her mama got back that Nat raised the subject of Christmas, asking deceptively casually while she tied Daisy up (she was teaching her how to escape restraints, and they had moved on to rope because Daisy had gone through all the handcuffs Nat had tried in minutes by quaking them to pieces like she did guns) what her plans were for Christmas. 

Daisy, wriggling to try and find some give in Nat’s expertly tied knots tried to shrug “I dunno, you’d have to ask Coulson.”

“What did you do last year?” her mama asked, watching her carefully, probably for any sign that Daisy was uncomfortable and wanted to stop the exercise. 

Daisy smiled at the memory of last Christmas. It was the first Christmas she’d had where she’d felt like she was spending it with family, and even though Fitz had still been very ill, Simmons had been preparing to leave and they had the traitor Ward in the basement, it had been a good Christmas. They’d taken the day off from making the Playground into a properly functioning base and spent the day all together, they’d had a Christmas tree and everything.  They’d gotten each other presents and cooked dinner together and had Christmas crackers and May and Coulson had played silly Christmas games with her while Jemma and Leo went to call their parents.

“We had Christmas here” Daisy said “decorated the kitchen and common room and cooked together and stuff.” she twisted her wrists inwards, quaking the rope as much as she could from the angle her hands were at and trying to snap the strands. 

“Would you like to spend Christmas at the Barton’s?” her mama asked, voice still casual. A little _too_ casual “I usually spend Christmas with them at their farm and Laura wants to meet her niece and Coop and Lila will love you. I mean, it’s ok if you don’t want to, if you’re not ready, there’s no pressure, we can spend Christmas here.”

Daisy abandoned trying to wriggle out of her bonds, caught by her mama’s words “We? You’d change your plans for me?”

Her mama reached over to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, the touch gentle and caring “Of course I would Pauchok.” she said warmly, and Daisy was caught for a moment in how far they’d come in the last few weeks, and how much more comfortable with being open her mama was getting.  Daisy leaned her head into her mama, the closest she could get to hugging her while still tied up, which she should probably go back to working on. 

She thought about it as she did so, twisting her hands as much as possible to direct her quakes at the edges of the rope, fraying and snapping the edges of the cord and loosening them a little. On the one hand, she wouldn’t get to spend Christmas with her mom or dad, or with FitzSimmons and the rest of the team. But she’d gotten to spend last Christmas with them, and given her caterpillars were all scattering for a week around Christmas, going to visit family and friends they hadn’t seen in months, it was a good time to go away. But going to wherever Uncle Clint had hidden his family to meet her pseudo aunt and cousins, people who were important to her mama, who were her mama’s family? What if they didn’t like her? What if they didn’t really want her intruding on their traditions? These people and the Avengers were mama’s family, what if she made a bad impression? 

One hand finally slipped free of the rope behind her and she shook the ties off her other hand, quaking the rope around her ankles and watching it fall to pieces, and she sat up with a smug expression. 

“Got it!” she said, offering her mama the pieces of rope which had been around her wrist. Nat gave her a smile of praise and didn’t push her about the still unanswered question hanging in the air. 

Daisy leaned against the headboard and chewed on her lip for a moment before she finally said “Are you sure they want me there? Christmas is a time for family.” she kept her voice casual, even though she knew it wasn’t going to fool her mama. It didn’t. 

Arms wrapped around her shoulders, pulling her close “You are family.” her mama said firmly. 

“Not theirs” Daisy said

“You’re my family so you’re their family.” Nat said, her voice brooking no argument “They want you there Daisy. Laura practically attacked me when I told her I had a daughter and she thought I hadn’t brought you round for twenty years. They want to meet you.” 

Daisy curled into the hug, comforted by her mama’s reassurance but still not quite sure.  She’d spent far too many Christmas’s half included in other families festivities, a witness to family scenes that didn’t quite fully welcome her. “What if they don’t like me?”

“Pauchok, they’re going to love you. Coop and Lila will pounce on another potential playmate and you have superpowers! Laura will probably say you’re too skinny and try to feed you half the kitchen and she might actually be satisfied that one of us is eating enough for once! They’re going to adore you sweetheart.” 

Daisy paused “Did you just call me sweetheart?”

“No.” then “Don’t, for both our sanities, tell Clint.”

Daisy laughed, the feeling shaking the tension from her body. Her mama seemed so certain that Uncle Clint’s family would like her, and the thought of having a ‘normal’ family Christmas seemed too wonderful to be true, even if it was shadowed by not getting to spend Christmas with her Shield family. 

“I’ll need to ask Coulson for leave” she warned “I don’t know if they can spare me with my caterpillars also going away.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Barton family fics so Christmas at the Bartons is definitely happening! There's a lot coming before that though :-)


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning, angst coming

Coulson pouted, actually _pouted_ , when Daisy asked if she could take a few days off to go to the Barton’s for Christmas.

Daisy wasn’t sure whether to feel amused or touched at how clearly reluctant he was to let her go. May was a little more resigned to it. “You technically worked Christmas last year so you’re owed the leave. Baring any sudden emergency, you can have the time.”

“Thanks May” Daisy said to her SO, feeling a little guilty despite herself.

“Stop it.” May said, giving her a look that reminded Daisy how well she could read her “You spent last year with us.”

“I know, but, I’ll miss you guys” Daisy said.

“You can spend next Christmas with us” Coulson said, and Daisy nodded happily.

“Copy that.”

“Now go and decrypt those files for us, Christmas isn’t for another three weeks” May said, and Daisy grabbed her laptop and scarpered before Coulson could change his second’s mind.

\------------

In retrospect, it had all been going too well. It had been too calm for too long. Nothing but minor missions and small problems and something was bound to go horribly wrong soon because it had just been too long since the last major disaster. At the time though, Daisy hadn’t known everything was about to go horribly, horrifically wrong, and Mack’s news that they had a mission and to grab Lincoln, Elena, Ben and Joey, - the latter cleared for welcome wagon missions just a week ago – was welcome. Daisy hadn’t had a mission for over a week and she was getting restless.

Even the news that their mission wasn’t going to be as straightforward as usual (or more accurate given they were picking up a new inhuman, even less straightforward than usual) couldn’t dent her or her caterpillars enthusiasm for getting a mission, although  it did bring their moods down to more determined than excited. Someone else had gotten to the inhuman first. Intel had been passed to them (viya several other groups) from major crimes in Boston Massachusetts that a robbery ring appeared to have a powered human. Surveillance footage recovered from one of the banks hit showed a masked man with a gun to the back of a dark haired woman, forcing her to make wavy patches of translucent something in walls, allowing the robbers in to empty the vaults. The department had asked for help, and the problem had been passed up until it had reached someone who knew about Shield, and it was their mission now. 

It took Daisy half an hour to get into the suspected members of the gangs social media and email accounts, and from there, to access the ip addresses used to post. They robbers had all used VPNs, but those VPNs had all been rented off the same company, and it didn’t take long to hack into that company, find their data and track the original ip addresses to a warehouse. They really weren’t as smart as they thought they were. 

From there, the job was more straightforward. They went in, took down the robbers, and protected the inhuman, before bringing her back for orientation, training in control if needed, and then gave her the option of joining the caterpillars. Not precisely simple, especially as it was their first mission as a team that was going to involve combat, but not too challenging either. They flew out in an hour and Daisy spent the flight reassuring her caterpillars that they were ready for this and they could do it.

And, to a certain point, she was right. They took down the robbers perfectly. Lincoln got the electrical security system, Joey melted the locks, chains and anything else metal on the doors, Daisy pulled apart all the guns, Ben searched the place with his shadows and sent information to Elena who snapped ties around their wrists and Mack shot anyone who moved with icer blasts. There were only fifteen robbers, and in minutes they had secured the base and located the room the inhuman was locked in.

That was when the mission went horribly wrong. 

What the footage of the inhuman woman’s back did not show was that she was pregnant. Very pregnant. Very pregnant and apparently in  _ already in labour _ . 

Daisy tried not to panic. For a second, seeing the woman moan her way through what was clearly a contraction on the concrete floor, her mind went utterly blank with panic. What on earth was she supposed to do now? She wasn’t trained to deal with women in labour! Then May’s training kicked in and she took a deep breath, set the panic aside, and spoke down her comm.

“I’ve located the target, she’s in the north-east corner and appears uninjured. Lincoln I need you to get over here and Mack call HQ, the target appears to be pregnant and in labour.”

She was quite proud of the fact that she managed to say all that calmly, especially when she heard her caterpillars react across the comm. Setting that too aside however she crouched down and approached the woman, who was watching her with fearful eyes.

“It’s ok, we’ve come to rescue you.” Daisy said “I’m Daisy, I’m part of a team of inhumans called the caterpillars. Part of what we do is help inhumans who have just transformed or who need help in any way, you’re safe now.”

The woman watched her with exhausted eyes, but some of the fear had left them “Amy Eldridge” she introduced herself, before she cried out in pain again, another contraction clearly just having hit. Mack skidded into the room with Lincoln just as it faded, even the usually unflappable Mack looking a little off-kilter. Lincoln just looked plain panicked.

“I’m not a midwife!” he pointed out to Daisy, his voice high with panic “We need to get her to a hospital.”

“ _ **NO!**_ No hospital! They’ll take my baby!” Amy yelled, panic tearing through her voice. 

“We won’t let that happen” Daisy said soothingly, but inside she didn’t know what to do. The inhumans were to at least some degree public knowledge by this point, but they were far from accepted, and attacks on suspected inhumans weren’t uncommon. 

“ _No! No hospitals!”_ Amy cried, shaking her head violently “They’ll experiment on him. I want Andy! I want my husband!”

Daisy shot a glance at Mack who nodded and started talking into his comm, do doubt getting someone back at the Playground to look up Amy Eldridge and find her husband. Daisy meanwhile tried to reason with Amy.

“Mrs Eldridge, we don’t have anyone trained as a midwife, for both your and your babies safety, we need to get you to a hospital.”

“ _No hospitals! No! They took me from the hospital! They took my blood and then those men came and took me and gave me pills and made me change! They’ll take my boy too! Please, no hospitals, pl-ahhhhhhh”_

The rest of her (seriously alarming) plea was lost in her cry as another contraction gripped her. The floor beneath them suddenly vanished for several inches, sending them dropping down, only to reappear again around Daisy’s ankles and most of Amy’s body. The woman moaned and the floor vanished again, then reappeared, vanished and reappeared as she tried to control her powers and free herself. Daisy finally pointed her hands at the floor and timed it, quaking them up into the air as the ground solidified again below them. Only for it to become like smoke again a second later as the rest of her caterpillars arrived. 

Lincoln, who’d managed to retreat to jump out onto solid ground at some point in the last thirty seconds looked around in panic.

“What do we do?” he asked, turning to Mack and Daisy. Daisy turned to Mack, pleading with her partner and technically her superior to have a plan, but Mack just looked blankly back at her. Amy cried out in pain again from another contraction and Daisy took a deep breath. _Panic later_ she told herself. 

“We have to get her to the containment module.” Daisy said, taking charge “Mack call the quinjet, Joey can you make a hole in the roof?” 

“No! _No hospital_!” Amy cried, near hysterical with pain and panic.

“Its not a hospital” Daisy soothed from the side of the room where Amy’s out of control powers weren’t reaching to sink her into the concrete. “Its a special module that you can’t affect with your powers. So you stop going through the floor.”

Amy calmed a little “No hospitals?” she asked, tears in her eyes, and Daisy frantically tried to think. They weren’t trained to do this. Neither Lincoln nor Simmons had ever been trained in maternity care. But given what Amy had said about being taken from a hospital, given the way she was affecting the environment around her, it may not be safe to take her to hospital, not for her, her child or the other people in the hospital. They were going to have to manage this themselves. 

“No hospitals” she agreed, desperately hoping she had made the right call as the containment unit appeared through the widening hole in the roof and started lowering towards them. 

Ben used his shadows to lift Amy into the air and carry her forwards, the woman looking in no condition to walk herself, but seconds after he settled her on the bed, when Daisy had just reached the door to the module, the woman screamed, her voice high and shrill with agony, and Daisy saw foot  _ appear _ in thin air above her stomach, before turning to mist and vanishing again. 

Leaving behind a hole in Amy Elbridge's shirt. And her stomach.

Daisy raised a hand to her comm and practically screamed into it “Someone get down to the Cocoon! I need Jeni and Simmons!  _**Now!!** _ ” but even as she watched a fist solidified through Amy’s stomach, putting another hole in the woman and the mission went utterly FUBAR. 

\-----------

Natasha stood in the hanger and watched her daughter emerge from the quinjet, her shoulders slumped inwards and a closed expression on her face that couldn’t disguise the utter devastation in her eyes. She felt her own throat tighten with sympathetic pain at the destroyed look in her Pauchok’s eyes. 

She’d sat in the control room idly listening to the feed from the caterpillars comms when they’d come across a complication, which had gotten more complicated, which had rapidly become a problem which had suddenly exploded into a nightmare situation.

She’d listened to the caterpillars panic over comms, listened to the desperate attempt to deliver the inhuman baby and keep the mother alive. Listened to Lincoln and Simmons giving the mother blood transfusions her body fought because it wasn’t inhuman blood, listened as Jeni followed instructions to heal the wounds in the mothers stomach, and then the ones in her back, listened as Simmons had pulled Daisy aside and told her the mother was  very unlikely  to live, but the baby could, listened as Daisy  made the call and  told Jeni to stop, to save her strength, and listened as Simmons and Lincoln performed an emergency C-section from theory on the inhuman mother, as Jeni worked on the baby - giving him strength sapped by the long labour and irregularity of its delivery. She listened and felt her heart crack as the baby was handed to Amy to hold as the inhuman slipped away, felt her heart break as she heard Andy Eldridge finally arrive on another quinjet, and heard Amy say goodbye to her husband and son. Listened to them fight to save Amy despite everything, heard them fail. Heard Daisy promise Andy that he and his son would be cared for, that they could come back to the Cocoon, that their scientists would find a way for the baby to be safe. 

She heard Daisy do what needed to be done. Then she watched the blinking red light on a monitor that indicated Daisy’s comm was on go dark, and knew what needed to be done was done. May and Coulson (who had arrived in the control room under a minute after it all went FUBAR) had shared silent looks of deep worry, and gone to the hanger to wait for the quinjet and the caterpillars to return. Natasha had called Clint, then followed silently. 

The quinjet had landed smoothly, returning to its usual spot as though it was just a routine mission, as though everything was alright. But the dead look in Daisy’s eyes as she walked out, trying to stand strong but unable to quite hide the slump of her shoulders, that look betrayed the truth. As did the blood on Lincoln’s split knuckles and the redness of his eyes as he followed his leader out of the quinjet. So too did the way Simmons and Jeni held each others hand in a white knuckled grip as they walked out of the jet, their own eyes red and puffy, steps shaky. It showed in the miserable looks on Joey and Ben’s faces as they made their silent way out, sticking to the edge of the ramp as though they were sneaking back into the base, ashamed. It showed in the way the normally calm and collected Mack was clenching and unclenching his fists, and the usually tough Elena looked pale and exhausted as she led a sandy haired man down the ramp, a blanket lined basket in his arms because he couldn’t even hold his child safely. 

Daisy gave a few quiet instructions to Lincoln and then peeled off from the group, followed by Mack, and they walked over to Coulson, steps slow and defeated. Daisy didn’t look at any of them as she started to summarise the events of the mission, but Coulson cut her off.

“Daisy, you don’t have to...we know.” 

Daisy nodded, the movement jerky and not quite right. “I’ll, I’ll go check on the Cocoon then.” she turned to go, but Mack stopped her with a touch on her arm.

“I got it Tremors. You’ve done enough.” 

Daisy shook her head “I need to make sure...” she started.

“You’ve done enough.” May said, her voice making clear it was an order. “Mack can check on your caterpillars and Fitz has got Jemma.”

Daisy looked for a moment like she was going to argue, but then exhaustion swept over her face and she nodded “Thanks Mack”

She stood there looking lost for a moment as Mack followed the caterpillars out, then turned in the direction of the door closest to the bunks. Nat slipped forwards to grab her arm before she could.

“Food first” she said, because asking if she was ok would be stupid but she isn’t letting her Pauchok just go to bed immediately after a mission like that. Daisy didn’t fight her as she steered her out of the hanger and down to the kitchen, and for once she and May didn’t have a silent bickering match about who got to cook for her. Nat sat Daisy in a chair and put the kettle on and May pulled bread and cheese out of the fridge for Coulson to start making grilled cheese. Nat slid a mug of tea infront of Daisy, watching the way the woman’s hands shook a little as they wrapped around the mug, the way her lips wobbled every so slightly as she drank. 

May sat down on Daisy’s other side “Talk to us Daisy.” she said, her voice gentle even though it was phrased as an order.

“What is there to talk about.” Daisy said, voice flat and emotionless despite her hands shaking. “We couldn’t save them both.”

“Don’t bottle things up Daisy, I know I taught you better than that” May said, her usual brusqueness not hiding the concern swimming in her eyes. 

Daisy’s hands shuddered violently, and she put the tea back down on the table, her breath hitching “W-we couldn’t save her.” she said, her voice finally losing its empty quality and hinting at the brokenness her eyes showed. “She lost so much blood a-and, and she’s  _ dead. _ I screwed up and someone’s  _ dead _ .”

“It’s _not_ your fault” May and Nat said, almost in tandem.

“She should have been in a hospital,” Daisy argued “I should have insisted. It was my call, my responsibility.”

“You don’t know she would have lived in a hospital.” Coulson said, putting a plate of grilled cheese sandwiches in front of Daisy “What could they have done that a doctor, one of our best scientists and an inhuman healer couldn’t? Because of you and your team at least her son is alive, you saved the baby.”

Daisy sprang so suddenly to her feet that even Nat hadn’t realised she was about to do it “Because of me a child will grow up without his mom” she said, her voice so choked Nat could barely make out the words. Then she turned and half ran out of the kitchen, the metallic sound of the door showing she’d quaked it into uselessness behind her. Nat lunged for the other door, but May grabbed her arm, then held on as Nat tried to twist free. 

“Let her go, she’s not going to listen tonight.”

“She shouldn’t be alone” Nat argued, furious.

“She’s not going to let us close right now.” Coulson said, the sadness on his face terrible to see. 

“This is her Bahrain” May said, her voice heavy. “We have to wait for her to come to us.”

Nat still only waited ten minutes, giving her daughter ten minutes of just her own space before she couldn’t bear it any longer and went looking for her. But Daisy had disappeared down to the Cocoon, where she couldn’t follow, no matter what she tried on the door.

The night that followed was one of the longest of Natasha’s life, she barely slept, and that uneasily, haunted by the look in her daughters eyes, and what her little Pauchok was going through alone, refusing to let them in. She stumbled out to breakfast feeling almost more tired than she had the night before, and cooked kasha with twice the amount of honey she usually put in. But when May came in from tai-chi, Daisy wasn’t with her.

Natasha considered leaving it for a moment, but something in her gut wouldn’t let her rest, and she left the cooking to go back down to the Cocoon, banging on the door even though it had been useless last night.

This time though Lincoln, tired-eyed but looking better than the night before, opened it, his brows furrowing in confusion when he saw Natasha, and she knew. She asked anyway.

“Is Daisy here?” 

Lincoln shook his head, and then a beat later began to frown with concern “She went back to her bunk last night, isn’t she there?”

And even though Natasha  _ knew _ in her gut what she’d find, she spun away without a word and ran back up to the Playground, back to her daughter’s bunk, eyes fl y ing around the room and taking it all in in a second. 

A drawer was open and empty of clothes, the bag in the corner was missing, a note sat on the unused bed.

Daisy was gone.

\--------------------

Daisy wasn’t sure when exactly she decided to leave, only that at some point between fleeing her parents and arriving at the Cocoon the weight of her failure and it’s consequences became too heavy for her and she knew she shouldn’t be head of the team. She made the wrong call. She should have taken Amy to a hospital as soon as she realised the woman was in labour. And maybe, maybe she would still have died in the hospital, but the doctors could have tried, they could have tried  _ something _ . 

Mack met her at the door of the Cocoon and tried to send her to bed, but she said she just wanted to see everyone before she went. Her partner had scanned her face before sighing and giving in.

“They’re in the kitchen” 

The looks of grief, guilt and pain on her caterpillars faces tore at Daisy. This was her fault. If she’d sent Amy to a hospital then at least it wouldn’t have been her team’s responsibilities. Jeni was crying again, curled into Elena’s side, body shaking with sobs. She wasn’t even a qualified medic yet, she shouldn’t have the weight of a life on her. And it wasn’t on her, it was on Daisy. Her call, her fault.

She exchanged a few words with her team, told them it wasn’t their fault, repeated Coulson’s words to them, that they had done everything they could, that they had saved the boy. Told them they had done well, to get some rest. She waited until they’d all slowly headed off to bed, looking tired but lighter, and went to see Andy. 

Mack had gotten him set up in one of the empty rooms, with a cot they’d cobbled together from leftover wall panels and blankets. The man looked broken. He had been through hell the last few weeks already, after his wife and unborn child went missing, only to be called up to be told his wife had been found but could die because her baby had developed powers along with her. He’d arrived just in time to watch his wife die, and he couldn’t even hold his newborn son without fear of his out of control powers, which while they had calmed since the trauma of birth, had not stopped entirely. His whole world had shattered around him and he looked like he knew it. 

He looked up when she knocked on the door and entered, his face bleak with grief and misery. Daisy felt guilt and shame twist deeper into her stomach at the sight.

“I just came to tell you I stopped by the lab on the way here, Fitz is working on making a suit out of this stuff.” she gestured at the walls. “It won’t be as flexible as normal clothes, but you’ll be able to hold him at least.”

Something like a positive emotion flickered across the man’s devastated face, and he nodded.

“Thank you agent.” he paused, and then “For everything.”

And somehow, those words were worse than anything anyone else had said to her since it all began “I’m sorry” she said, unable to even articulate the rest of the sentence. I’m sorry your wife is dead. I’m sorry I didn’t send her to hospital. I’m sorry I told Jeni to give up and save the baby.

“You did all you could.” he said, voice heavy but genuine. 

And on some level, Daisy knew he was right, she knew that whatever other decisions she might have made, it may not have changed anything. But that didn’t make Daisy feel better. She wondered if this was how May had felt after Bahrain, shell shocked and grieving with a life on her shoulders. May had left the field for over a decade after Bahrain. Daisy knew she as going to do something different.

“I’m going to find the people who did this.” she promised Andy “I’m going to make sure they never hurt anyone again.”

Andy called after her as she turned to leave “Wait, what’s your name?”

Daisy hesitated “Skye” she said “Sort of”, because for a moment it seemed strangely fitting, the name she’d gone by as an orphan when she’d just cost a child his mother.

“Thank you Skye” he said


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another action chapter, but exploring Daisy and Nat's feelings a bit more. Family bonding will return soon. :-)

Daisy knew she’d most likely wake her mama up if she returned to h er bunk, the super-agent undoubtedly waiting for her, so she went to find Sophie. The inhuman had already sent two people halfway across the US, more people than she’d sent that distance ever before, but her strength had grown in leaps and bounds over the last few weeks as she’d grown used to portalling herself between the base and her home across America several times a day (despite Daisy and Arin’s best attempts to get her to stay put with her parents). When Daisy asked if she could portal her to her bunk and back, Sophie had nodded, then frowned. 

“Why?”

“I need some stuff from my bunk without alerting the agent in the next bunk over. I’m not ready to talk about what happened.” she said, keeping her voice carefully casual. 

Sophie was smart, but Daisy had grown up in the system, and she knew how to lie convincingly enough to fool even some agents, and Sophie wasn’t an agent. She swallowed the excuse without pause and opened the portal for Daisy, promising to open another for her to come back in ten minutes. Daisy only took seven to change and shove everything she needed into her bag. She spent half an hour working on her laptop in the Cocoon, making her bank account vanish from shield records, getting started on setting up a fake identity and taking down a part of the base’s security for an hour to let her leave unnoticed. She was out of the Playground barely fifteen minutes later, her bag filled with clothes, her laptop, some cash and a few meals. She made her way through the dense forest over and around the base to the road, and sped towards the town with a series of quake jumps, the reinforced gloves comforting around her arms. 

In the town she pulled up her hood and avoided security cameras as she went to the train station, buying three tickets for three different places from the woman at the desk, then heading to the platform of the one she actually wanted, taking out her laptop and hacking into the station’s security, putting a bug in that would delete the entire nights footage and taking down their transaction records for good measure. She didn’t want to be followed. May and Coulson would tell her to wait, and go in with a team. They’d make her talk about it and return to base, to the caterpillars. The caterpillars were better off without her.

\----------------

Three days later the shock of the mission had begun to fade into something calmer, but more permanent. She was beginning, slowly to know that Coulson was right, and she may have made the right call. But knowing it didn’t make the result of the mission any easier. A woman had died on her watch, her baby would never know his mother. She wondered if this was what had led May to quit the field all those years ago, after Bahrain. The feeling of being hollowed out. The unreasonable but unshakable shame, like there had been some other option you just hadn’t been good enough to see. She knew Amy Eldridge’s death wasn’t her fault. But she didn’t return to shield. 

The likelihood of May, Coulson and Natasha killing her increased every day she kept running, but the thought of returning to her team, to the kindness and warmth she knew would be waiting when she felt like she deserved none of it kept her moving. Besides, she was making progress.

She’d looked through hospital records from the hospital Amy had been taken from, noted the staff who had worked with her, when and why the blood had been taken, where it had been tested, and tracked the information to a New York based blood testing company named  _ Alcaeus _ . She’d then hacked their website to find a, at first glance, above-board company. Digging deeper however, she found names of their clients, and when she cross referenced it with police reports and news found them connected to no less than fifteen disappearances over the past six months, all fifteen cases with blood work marked for ‘further analysis’. Two of those cases involved a father and three year old child. 

Someone was searching for and kidnapping potential inhumans.

It took Daisy a day to finish investigating the hospital Amy was taken from, and be certain the doctor who had taken her blood and drugged her on the follow up visit was gone. She spent the two days it took her to travel down to New York digging up as much information on  _ Alcaeus _ and it’s affiliated companies as she could. What she found did not look good. If she went deeper into the companies accounts there were seven large payments coming in from groups that were, upon investigation, dodgy. One of those payments was from the group of robbers who they had tried to save Amy from. 

_ Alceaus  _ was turning and then  _ selling _ inhumans. 

Tucked into the corner of train carriages, she searched for the other six inhumans who had been sold, found the groups who had bought them, made files of information on each. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what had happened or was happening to the other eight people who had been taken. She was going to find out though.

She spent several hours scoping out the laboratory during the afternoon, watching people and vans come and go, looking like just another medical company. Their security didn’t appear to be any more significant that a law-abiding company would have, but she knew there was likely higher security inside, around the areas that might give away the other activities this company got up to. She set up a delayed email on her laptop, attached all the information she had on  _ Alceaus _ and the inhumans who’d been sold, and waited until the last light had gone off in the building, and then waited another two hours before activating the email. If she didn’t stop it within 8 hours, May and Coulson would get sent everything she’d found out. She might be dead at that point, but at least Shield would be able to deal with  _ Alcaeus _ . Although if she wasn’t dead, there was a good chance her shield parents not to mention her mama would kill her themselves. She tried not to think about that as she slipped out of her hiding place and made her way to the back of the building. 

The evenings she’d spent learning to pick locks with her mama came immediately in useful as she picked the lock on an office window. She quickly put a spoon on the detector on the window before an alarm could sound and held her breath as the seconds ticked passed. Finally, she climbed through and closed the window, removing the spoon a second before the window closed back onto the detector. She was in.

She searched the office quickly, switched on the computer and scanned the files, and concluded whoever worked there was not involved in the shadier activities of  _ Alcaeus _ . From there, she moved on, searching the offices she came to quickly and quietly as Coulson had taught her. A noise in an office down the hall had her freezing, until a mouse ran across the carpet and vanished, and for an instant she missed her team desperately. There was no Mack watching her six, no May, Bobbi or Hunter searching other parts of the building, no Coulson directing them over comms or FitzSimmons ready to analyse anything they found. She was on her own. Maybe this hadn’t been the best idea. If, - no, when – she went back to shield, her SO was going to half kill her for going in alone. 

But then she finally found what she was looking for. A file hidden behind a bunch of other files on a shelf, looking identical to all the other files in the office, but marked  _ RL Further Analysis _ on the front. RL was one of the victims who had not been sold on. She flipped the file open and started to speed read the contents, resisting the urge to swear as she caught sight of the heading on the top of the page.  _ Hercules _ . 

Of course, Alcaeus was the birth name of Hercules in the Greek myths. Daisy had read about it when looking into Hercules for Coulson, trying to find out more about the rumours of human-experimentation. Alcaeus was a part of the Hercules project. The urge to swear didn’t abate as she kept reading. Ryan Longton was dead. His blood had been drained and transfused into several ex-marines, who was then been given the fish oil tablets they’d tried their best to collect all of. Two marines had died, one had developed powers but was in critical care as only patches of his body had gone through terrigenisis, the rest remaining fully human, and his nervous and circulatory systems were destroying themselves and him. The result of the experiment was marked  _ progress _ . 

A sound from the distance made Daisy put the file down. That wasn’t a mouse. Those were boots. She replaced the file in it’s hiding place, and slid under the desk, holding her breath as the patrol passed. Except it didn’t pass. Too late, from her vantage point underneath the desk, she saw a switch and a little light now glowing red. This office evidently had better security than the other offices had.

Inwardly Daisy cursed at herself for being so careless, but there was no time to stop. She rolled out from under the desk as the door opened, hands already up and vibrating streams of air. The figure in the doorway flew backwards, and Daisy lunged for the window. She was on the third floor by now, but she could quake as she fell. An alarm screamed as she quaked the lock and pulled it open. But just as she climbed up onto the window sill and stuck a leg out a piecing noise tore through the air. Daisy fell back into the office, hands clamped over her ears, feeling like her head was splitting open. Blinding pain drove through her temples and the world went blurry with agony until darkness swam across her vision and everything went blessedly dark.

\-------------

Daisy came back to consciousness slowly, becoming slowly more aware of the pulsing pain in her head, and the hard cold ground beneath her. Alarm only started to trickle through her mind slowly, but it finally penetrated her brain that none of this was a good sign. She blinked open her eyes only to find that wherever she was, it was pitch black. She tried to move a hand in front of her face but found her wrists cuffed tightly behind her. She wriggled her fingers, trying to coax feeling back into her icy cold hands and arms, before giving it up as a bad job and wriggling her hands around until she could direct a stream of vibrations at the cuffs. A moment later she was free, and tucking her icy fingers between her legs, trying to find some warmth. Wherever this place was, it wasn’t heated. 

When she could feel her hands properly again, she started exploring her environment, trying not to focus on how bad this was. She tried to remember if she’d used her powers in a way that was noticeable before getting caught, or if her quakes were still a surprise weapon. Given the cuffs, she was inclined to think they were, but she had to plan like they weren’t. Even if they had no idea she was an inhuman though, this was still bad.

She had no idea how long she’d been unconscious, no idea where they had taken her, or what they intended to do to her. She wasn’t sure if it was a good sign or not that she hadn’t woken to an interrogation.

Her groping hands finally touched something. The wall was rough, and as freezing as the rest of the room, but she kept her fingers on it as she followed it round to a corner, then to another corner. A step along the third wall her foot hit something soft, and she bent down to find what she was pretty sure was a mattress. On the next wall she found a toilet, set into the wall. There did not seem to be a door.

She crawled over the floor feeling for a trapdoor, trying to ignore the increasingly claustrophobic feeling creeping up on her. She’d never been overly scared of small spaces before, but she really did  _ not _ like being locked into places. She spent what felt like forever feeling over and over the floor and walls until she had to admit that the door must be in the ceiling. She tried to ignore the panicky voice in her head that pointed out there may not  _ be _ a door. Someone had carried her in here, there had to be a way in and out. They had left her at least a mattress and a toilet, so they had to want her alive for something, they weren’t going to leave her in this hole forever. 

Not that she had any intention of sitting around and waiting. She’d searched the floor and walls, so the door had to be in the ceiling somewhere. Assuming there was one.  _ No! _ There  _ was _ a door. She just had to reach it. And chances were, given it was in the ceiling, it wasn’t locked, and even if it was, a quake blast could break most locks. She just had to find and reach it. 

She couldn’t quake all the way through the walls, she’d already tried that when searching. The walls were too thick, she couldn’t feel the other side, so there was little point trying. Quaking small pieces out of the walls however, that she could do. She felt her way back over to the mattress and started putting finger and toe holds into the concrete, glad she appeared to still have her gloves, even if her lock-picks and icer were missing. It was harder than she’d expected it to be in the dark, as she had to remember the rough position of each hole and feel for it with her hands and feet, but she made it slowly up to the ceiling. Precariously, she felt across the ceiling as far as she could, fingers on her left hand digging into the wall in a terrifyingly weak grip. Logically, she knew she was only a metre and a bit above ground, but in the pitch black it could have been a mile. 

The trapdoor wasn’t above her. Carefully, she started quaking finger and toe holds along the wall, working across it inch by inch, and investigating the roof as she went. She hoped desperately that the entrance to this place was at the edge of the room, because if it was in the middle, Daisy didn’t think she could reach it. Flying, or even hovering, required two streams of vibrations, which needed two hands, which didn’t leave one spare to find or open a trapdoor.

Finally, her questing fingers found a crack in the ceiling. Her heart leapt and she leaned further, following the crack along the roof, only to realise a split-second too late that she’d leaned too far. She barely got her hands pointed down in time, the vibrations only partly breaking her fall and leaving her to collide hard with the concrete floor. Pain shot through her right shoulder and hip and she groaned.

Slowly, she picked herself up and found the mattress again, her shoulder and abused fingers complaining as she climbed. She worked her way back round to the crack in the ceiling, and quaked more small holds into the wall before edging underneath it. This time, she leaned out carefully, questing fingers finding the edges of the trapdoor, then searching for a handle or lock. Finding nothing, she dug her fingers and toes into her holes and pushed up with her right hand. 

It was heavy. Really heavy, but she got it open a crack, and dim light filtered through, making her heart leap with joy. She hadn’t realised until that crack of light how much she didn’t like the dark. She shoved the door further up, her shoulder screaming with pain, but she managed to create enough of a gap to stick her hand through, and with her hand braced on the floor of the level above, she could quake the trapdoor without flinging herself to the ground of her cell with the pushback. The trapdoor moved up slowly, more light reaching her eyes and she drank it up greedily. She was just preparing to push harder with her power and open the door up fully when the sound of boots reached her ears.

For a moment she debated her options. She could quake the door hard and climb out, but they would certainly hear the crash and she didn’t know how outnumbered she would be in a fight. Or, she could drop down and hope that they weren’t coming because they’d seen the trapdoor move on cctv. For a moment she wavered, but she didn’t like her odds in an unknown location against an unknown number of opponents, and so she took a gamble, reducing her quakes until the trapdoor eased shut and clinging to the wall as multiple footsteps came closer. She heard muffled voices speaking as they came closer, and guessed there were at least 4 of them. 

“Shall I put her with the other one?”

“No, put her in cell 2, boss will want to interrogate them alone when he gets back.”

“Yes sir.”

Daisy slowly let out her breath in relief and listened as sounds from above moved away slightly, a grating noise indicating the opening of another trapdoor, and then a while later the same grating noise indicating it closing again. She listened as the voices and footsteps grew further away again and started a slow count to five hundred, breathing evenly with each number. Not until she finished counting did she push up against the trapdoor again, repeating the process from earlier. This time, no one came to interrupt her, although the crash as the trapdoor opened fully made it pretty certain someone was going to be looking for her pretty soon. 

She scrambled out of her cell, breathing easier the moment she was out of the concrete box, and looked around. There were two dim lights hanging from the ceiling in a long, rectangular room. Four other trapdoors were set into the ground, with a long ladder leaning against the wall beside the one nearest to Daisy’s. She moved quickly to the other trapdoor, grabbing the ring in the middle and pulling, knowing she couldn’t leave the other prisoner behind and hoping they were conscious. 

The trapdoor seemed even heavier pulling than it had pushing, and every moment spent dragging the thing open was a moment someone could arrive. But when she finally got it open and peered down into the other cell she forgot all about it. Curly red hair was splayed against the grey concrete floor of the cell, eyes shut as her head lolled to the side, a bruise darkening on her cheekbone.

“Mama!” Daisy gasped, forgetting about people likely coming to investigate the noise as she lowered herself down into the cell. Her fingers scrambled for a pulse at the black widow’s neck, panic pulsing in her mind. She wilted in relief when she felt the steady beating under her fingers, and wanted to cry when the assassin started to stir. 

“Urrg” Nat moaned, her eyes flickering open and shut, then opening again as they focused on Daisy.

“Pauchok?” 

“Yeah” Daisy said, voice shaky “Yeah, it’s me.”

“You’re grounded.” Natasha said.

\-------------

Despite popular belief and what she’d have everyone believe, Natasha Romanoff was not fearless. She might be able to stay completely calm with only caution to remind her of her mortality in serious combat situations, but she felt fear. She may not show the slightest bit of anxiety when faced with a gun to the face or even torture, but she did feel the sickly cold of fear in her gut. She may not say a word, but when Clint was gone on risky solo missions she would stalk around the helicarrier and bite the head off anyone but Coulson, Hill or Fury who risked speaking to her. No, Natasha Romanoff was not fearless, but this, this was a new kind of fear.

Natasha had thought she was afraid when she found her daughter had left the base sometime during the night. Her daughter who was currently in an awful state of mind had struck off on her own to do who knew what. She’d thought she was scared. 

Within half an hour she’d had a tac-bag packed, called Clint and was halfway down the road to the town, the logical place Daisy would go first. Within another half hour she’d checked that no-one had rented a car the night before and found her way to the train station, half an hour after that, she was on a train. The trick with the tickets was smart, and it would have thrown her completely off if the ticket machine hadn’t been broken and Daisy could have used it. But it was and, clever or not, buying three tickets meant the woman working at the desk remembered Daisy, and remembered where she went. There was no security footage left at the station or any of the three trains (Nat hadn’t really expected there to be any), but after speaking to several security guards she was able to work out which train Daisy had taken.

Her daughter was good, she’d deleted her identity and managed to effectively vanish from the world for almost 8 years after leaving the system, and she’d only gotten better since then. But nobody had been seriously looking for her those 8 years. The black widow and (although not on the scene yet) hawkeye hadn’t been looking for her back then. 

Nat wasn’t as good a hacker as her daughter was, but she wasn’t a bad hacker either, and she checked every station along the line for security footage. Daisy wasn’t stupid, taking out the security footage of any station would be a dead giveaway, but she was also good at avoiding cameras, and all Nat managed to find was a brief flicker of brown hair in a crowd of people leaving a station that could be Daisy. It was however several stations before the one Daisy had a ticket for, so it made sense for her to get off there. She took a gamble and got off there too.

Two days later and she was getting more and more frustrated, aware that she was lagging further and further behind her daughter. She’d tracked Daisy successfully to a hospital, and it hadn’t taken much of a leap to realise it was the one Amy Eldridge was taken from. The realisation that Daisy was going after someone, alone and without backup did not do anything to lesson the tight knot of worry in her stomach. Which only got worse as it became clear that while she was covering the same physical ground in the hospital and interviewing the same people and looking in the same records, there was something she hadn’t found that Daisy had. 

Daisy had left the hospital after less than a day and caught another overnight train somewhere else, using cash to buy a single ticket meaning the ticket officer had no idea who she was or where she’d gone, and Nat was not only struggling to follow her footsteps, but also couldn’t work out where she was going.

When she finally tracked Daisy to New York, she couldn’t help but be relieved that at least this was familiar territory. She was pretty sure that Daisy was in New York as while facial recognition gave her absolutely nothing, New York couch station was the only couch station - among the several she and Clint had worked out Daisy might be going to - with a blurred out face on the security footage. Clint was however following up on another lead, trying to track down the doctor that had taken Amy Eldridge’s blood and then vanished into thin air. If they could beat Daisy to the finish line then they could intercept her before she got into danger. She hoped.

But when she got a phone call from Coulson, voice so carefully not panicked that Nat  _ knew _ something had happened, combined with a forwarded email that started ‘Hi, just in case something goes wrong, I’ve set this up to send in 8 hours if I don’t stop it.’ 

Natasha Romanoff, despite popular belief, was not fearless. She had not though, ever, at any point in her life she could clearly remember, felt fear like this.  _ In case something goes wrong. 8 hours. _

Her stomach felt icy cold with terror, and she could feel her heart beating at twice it’s usual pace. It took a momentous effort of will to force the symptoms of her fear back and find the calm she’d been trained never to lose. She opened the attached file and scanned through the information quickly. It was no wonder she and Clint hadn’t worked out where Daisy was going, the amount of high-level hacking she’d done to get the information on  _ Alcaeus _ was beyond Nat. But she didn’t really care about that, she just needed to know where her Pauchok had gone, and once she’d found that information, she called Steve. Clint was currently in another state, investigating the missing doctor’s childhood home. She couldn’t wait for him to get there. Steve was in the city, the only Avenger actually living in Avengers tower just then. Thor was off-world and Bruce and Tony were at a science conference in France. May, Coulson and the shield team were half a dozen states away. Steve was her only back up. 

Mercifully, Steve didn’t ask any questions when she called him, at 8.30 in the morning, and told him to suit up and meet her outside a small medical company in the outskirts of New York, and to be quick. She did however get a phone call from Hill demanding to know what was going on ten minutes later. Nat, busy hot-wiring a motorbike (she’d steal a car but bikes were faster in morning New York traffic) shoved the phone between her head and shoulder and summarised the data Daisy had sent her. 

“Stop and wait for backup and further intel” Hill ordered “You’re going in practically blind.”

“Steve’s my backup” Nat said, hopping on the motorbike and pulling out into the road.

“Negative, we don’t know what you two could be walking into.” Hill said “Stand down.”

“I can’t” Nat said “They have Daisy” and she hung up before the former shield commander could demand to know who Daisy was. She’d told the woman they had a hostage and she was going in, she couldn’t handle saying anything else. She was going to unravel if she admitted who Daisy was to her right now, and she couldn’t afford to be at anything but her best. 

Steve was waiting for her outside  _ Alcaeus _ , a helicopter parked a few blocks away. “Who's Daisy?” he asked in lieu of a greeting, which at least meant that Hill had almost certainly filled him in on the rest of what she’d told her. 

“A shield agent. She went in alone 9 and a half hours ago. We’re going to rescue her.”

“That’s a long time.” Steve pointed out “Are you sure she’s alive?”

Natasha hadn’t allowed, had forcefully  _ refused _ to allow, the thought to cross her mind, and Steve’s voicing of it felt like a bullet to the heart. She saw horror wash over Steve’s face and knew her own face must have shown significantly more than she usually allowed it to show. 

“Nat, who’s Daisy?” Steve asked again, his voice hushed. 

Nat swallowed hard, once, twice, pushed the fear beneath decades of training. “You go in the front, give them whatever excuse you like, I’m going to sneak into the back. Give me twenty minutes head start.”

She waited a beat for Steve to nod, her fellow Avenger accepting both that she wasn’t going to answer the question and the instructions, then turned and left.

“Nat?” Steve called from behind her “Be careful.”

Nat didn’t stop to bother responding, she’d do what needed to be done, no matter how dangerous. And if she didn’t find her Pauchok alive and healthy...then whoever was behind this would find out  _ exactly _ how she had earned the title Black Widow. 

\--------------

Getting in through a back window was easy, despite doing it in broad daylight, and she knocked out the first scientist she came across, stuffing them in a cupboard and stealing their lab-coat. She walked along the corridors like she belonged there, and nobody gave her a second glance. She searched the first office she found empty but found nothing, either to tell her more about what  _ Alcaeus  _ was up to or what had happened to Daisy. She left the office just as footsteps sounded from up the hall, and walked forwards to meet them, calm and relaxed, just another scientist working at the labs. She continued on, searching three more offices before she headed deeper into the building, even walking through one of the labs and glancing around. It was a risk, people were much more likely to clock someone who wasn’t supposed to be there if you went into their space than if you walked passed them in the halls. Natasha left as soon as one of the scientists gave her a second look, but she had what she had come for. A light had bleeped on one of the machines and instructions had popped up on the screen ‘Sample 47 to be taken to Lab E for further analysis’. It wasn’t much, but she remembered from Daisy’s notes that the people with blood-work labelled ‘further analysis’ had gone missing. Lab E sounded like a good bet. 

It took her half an hour to locate and get to Lab E, the process slowed by the fact that she didn’t want to risk asking someone directly. Lab E had a box outside it for test tubes and a secure enough door to confirm this was where she needed to go. It was also unfortunately, secure enough that she couldn’t just break in. The lock above the handle she could deal with without blinking, the ID scanner and thumb-scanner she could also deal with, given some time to watch the  _ Alcaeus _ employees and work out which were involved, then nick their ID and a coffee mug for a fingerprint (and some tape to lift that print and transfer it to the scanner). The iris scanner – not without some serious tech. Which left her with the less stealthy method. She knocked.

Well, she walked right on passed the door with only a cursory look at lab E, pressed the standard-issue camera-looping device in her pocket, walked back and then knocked. And then hid in the blind spot next to the door and waited, but she still knocked.

The poor scientist that came to see who was knocking didn’t stand a chance, he barely had the chance to look around in confusion before he was slumping to the floor after a firm blow to the back of the neck. Nat stole his ID badge and dragged him into Lab E and located another cupboard to stuff him in, continuing her mental timer as she did. She likely had around three minutes after the man arrived at the door before someone wondered why he didn’t come back, and probably another 3 after that before someone went to investigate, and another 3 before an alarm would probably be raised. That meant she had to be out or ready for a fight in 9 minutes. Which meant she had less than 7 now to find something useful or the right direction to look. Significantly less if they had technology good enough to resist Tony’s camera looping pulses. 

“Hey, you’re coming with us.”

_ Dammit _ Natasha thought as ten security guards ran into view. They evidently had technology good enough. She abandoned any pretence to belong there and pulled a gun from her pocket, shooting rapidly as she ran towards the group. Surprise gave her an advantage (doubtless they expected her to run  _ away _ ) and her training level gave her a larger one. But there was no hiding that many bodies, and if she was right and the security camera’s were still working, there was no point to it anyway. She ran. 

She found her way to a lab first and quickly shot ICER blasts at the scientists there. There was a man on a table in the centre of the room, skin too pale to be healthy. Nat ran over and reached for a pulse, knowing as soon as her fingers touched his skin that he was dead. She looked at the band on his wrist and winced ‘Elias Antwool’ it read. One of the missing people, and the father of the missing child. The missing child whose file (written by Daisy herself probably) had noted her mother had already died of cancer. A child who was now an orphan. If she was still alive.

Natasha tried not to think about what the dead man suggested for Daisy’s likelihood of being alive. She didn’t have time to stop and investigate the lab though, so she only through a rapid look around the room, taking in as much as possible before running for the exit. Tanks of blood sat next to the table the dead man lay on, probably the man’s given his far too pale skin. What they were doing with that blood however wasn’t made obvious by the cabinets of chemicals and row of computers and work surfaces.

Through the door was another lab, this one with scientists already taking cover, Nat didn’t stop to bother shooting any of them, although she did note the way they were shoving some blue thing into their ears. She didn’t have time to stop and investigate, not with boots already thundering behind her. She bolted out the other side of the lab into grey, featureless corridors all nefarious secret bases have and ran along them, searching rapidly for cover that would allow her to hide and pick off a few men or women with her gun. But she never got a chance to find any as a piecing scream tore through the air. Nat knew as soon as she heard it that it wasn’t normal – the sound seemed to stab knives through her head, sending black spots dancing across her vision and she barely managed to keep moving. A second passed and the scream continued, the pain almost unbearable and her vision going darker. She let herself fall to the ground and used the movement to hide the way her hand moved from her belt to her mouth, shoving the adrenaline pill in her cheek. Her last thought before she lost consciousness was that she hoped this meant Daisy hadn’t been shot.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had sooooo much trouble writing this, so apologies if its not as good. I find the character interaction so much easier to write than the actiony bits. Its written though, and I'm posting it early as a thank you to people for commenting because it's so encouraging to get feedback!

Natasha stirred, then snapped instantly to awareness as all at once she remembered what had happened before she fell asleep, along with instantly realising there was someone breathing near her. She blinked, pretending to be waking up slowly, then snapped her eyes open as she recognised her daughter’s face bending over her.

“Pauchok?” she asked, relief pouring through her like a sudden, overwhelming flood. 

“Yeah, yeah it’s me” she said, and Natasha realised all at once that, beneath the worry and stomach freezing terror that had followed, she was _furious_. 

“You’re grounded.” she informed her daughter. 

Daisy blinked, startled for a moment then, “Maybe we should get out of here first?”

“Probably a good idea.” Nat said setting aside her anger for the moment and sitting up with a groan, easily freeing herself from her handcuffs. She took in the small cell with a glance, noted the mattress, toilet and hole in the roof, and the lack of a second set of handcuffs. 

“You escaped your cell?” she asked Daisy.

Her Pauchok nodded “I quaked handholds in the wall and climbed up until I found the trapdoor. There’s a ladder up there though.” She pointed her palms flat at the ground and quaked, sending herself shooting up through the hole in the ceiling, and landing smoothly next to it.

“Handy” Natasha commented as her daughter vanished from sight, reappearing a moment later with the ladder. Seconds later she was up with her Pauchok, examining the room with an experienced eye. 

“No camera. If we close the cells they might not know we’re out.”

“I made a lot of noise when I got mine open” Daisy said, and Nat inwardly cursed. 

“Close them anyway, it’ll buy us some time.”

Daisy moved to obey, grabbing the trapdoor to Nat’s cell and grunting as she lowered it carefully. Nat joined her, lowering it as quietly as possible to the ground – no need to make any more noise on the off chance the first crash had been ignored.

“Should we check the other cells?” Daisy asked, and Nat inwardly groaned, but nodded. She hated the idea of finding the cells occupied as much because of the need to protect someone who wasn’t Daisy as the thought of others being held prisoner. Not only that, but every moment they spent in this room was a moment they wasted not getting away. 

The cells turned out to be empty, Nat wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or annoyed.

“Have you got any gear left?” she asked her daughter

“I’ve got my gloves, no gun, you?”

“They didn’t find the lock-picks sewn into my jacket, or the garrotte wire in my watch but they got everything else.” Nat summarised, pulling the picks and getting to work on the door, the lock giving in seconds under her practised hand. 

“Stay behind me” Nat ordered “watch our six but don’t engage in combat unless unavoidable.”

Daisy looked indignant “I can handle myself.” she protested.

Nat gave her a withering glare and waited until she visibly cringed “You’re the junior agent on this op, do as you’re told and watch our six.”

“Copy that.” Daisy said, swallowing nervously. “Uh, do you have any idea where we are? Or how long we were out?”

“I wasn’t out for more than an hour.” Nat said, showing Daisy her left palm, which still had tiny red marks from her viciously digging her nails in as she lost consciousness “But I took an adrenaline pill as I passed out. Your email reached shield at least two hours ago if that helps.”

“So I was out at least 8 hours, great.” Daisy said “Did they get you with that screaming too?”

Nat nodded “The scientists I ran passed were putting something in their ears, I suspect it made them immune. That’s our first objective unless we find an obvious way out.”

“Copy that” 

Nat gave Daisy one last stern look and opened the door “Stay behind me.” she reminded, and went through.

\-----------

Daisy did as she was told as they headed through the featureless corridors, but she kept her eyes sharp and her hands ready to fight anyway. Two against Hercules was distinctly better than one against them, especially given the extra was the Black Widow, but they were still unarmed apart from their hands and seriously outnumbered. However you looked at it, fighting at some point was almost inevitable.

They did however make it to a stairwell before they encountered trouble, Daisy darting behind her mama from one camera blind spot to another. Unfortunately, large yellow letters on the stairwell proclaimed them on ‘sublevel 46’. Natasha glanced down over the railing of the stairs, then back up.

“This wasn’t originally _Alcaeus’s_ base.” she observed

“What makes you think that?” 

“This place is massive, but badly guarded. They have more space than people.” there was a pause “And look at how dirty this place is, it’s been abandoned for years and not cleaned since then.”

“Well, that can only be good for us right?” Daisy asked, and was relieved when her mama nodded. 

Natasha didn’t say anything further as she started up the stairs, and it occurred to Daisy that her mama was different when on mission. There was an alertness and focus about her that was more active than the passive awareness she usually had, and she walked differently, weight balanced further forwards and constantly ready to spring into a fight. There was a certain predatory hardness to her eyes that told Daisy the Black Widow was prepared to kill if necessary. A certain viciousness betrayed by narrowed eyes. Abruptly Daisy remembered survival training from a summer camp a foster family had sent her to once.  _ Never threaten a mother bear’s young. _ Maybe that applied to spiders too. It was a surprisingly comforting thought.

A door clanging open several floors above them made Daisy freeze for an instant, then dive to flatten herself against the wall where her mama already was, her reflexes a second more honed. A voice above them cursed the lack of a lift, and boots heading quickly down steps. Daisy inwardly sighed – they couldn’t have gone up could they? Her mama signalled for her to stay there and started creeping up the stairs towards them, footsteps silent on the concrete.

Three men in combat vests came into view, talking among themselves. None of them saw the Black Widow until it was far too late, and only one of them managed to even shout with alarm before finding himself knocked out. Daisy hurried up the steps to join her mama as noises from above indicated the shout hadn’t gone unheard. Rapid footsteps from above indicated they were about to have company, at least 8 or 9, and Daisy hurriedly grabbed one of the guns and darted back towards the wall, preventing someone from being able to catch her by shooting down the stairwell. Her mama cast her an unhappy look but nodded, taking up a position in the other corner, both hands holding guns.

These guards were more wary, guns raised as they advanced down, but it didn’t stop Natasha from picking off the first two with precise shots. The rest scrambled backwards towards the relative safety of the next steps up. Nat shot another one through the two sets of railings that separated them and Daisy directed her vibrations at the group, shaking the guns to pieces in their hands. She’d switched to vibrating the air to fling them back against the wall before they even had time to panic.

“Nice trick” her mama observed. “Now lets hope they have some defence against whatever that screaming was.”

They did, mercifully, because they had scarcely finished searching the first two men (finding blue things shaped like hearing aids in pouches among other equipment) when an alarm split the air. Her mama stuffed the not-hearing-aids in her ears and Daisy followed suit. They made the world sound strange, like some sounds were being filtered out. Daisy supposed that meant they were working.

Natasha glanced up as distant noises suggested they would have more company soon, but didn’t stop searching the men. The noises were distant enough to suggest the source was at least several floors above them, and not in the stairwell yet. Daisy worked quickly beside her mama, stripping a man of his combat vest and pulling it on herself, tightening the straps to make it fit better. She pocketed his spare ammo, handing the ammo from the other men she searched to her mama. Her quakes were a better weapon than the gun, and the Black Widow was a better shot that she was anyway.

As soon as her mama straightened from the last man Daisy followed suit, running as quietly as possible up the stairs, sticking to the edges. They made it up another three floors before a voice from the door next to them called “Search the main staircase”

Daisy dived behind the door without hesitation, the instincts May had drilled into her unfaltering, her mama stood against the wall next to her, waiting. Seconds later the door opened, and a man emerged into stairs, closing the door behind him. He barely had a moment to look shocked before his eyes rolled back in his head. Nat caught him before he could hit the floor, lowering him soundlessly to the concrete. Unfortunately, the order must have been relayed through comms because doors above and below them clanged open too. Her mama gestured silently at the door and Daisy followed the Black Widow through.

The hallway the door led into was deserted, but the lab they went into passed that wasn’t. Eight men in combat gear guarded a cell at the far end of the long room, and five scientists looked up in stunned shock. They made as much use of the seconds it bought them as possible.

Daisy lost track of her mama briefly in the minute or so that followed, focusing on her own fights, throwing guards through the air with her vibrations and fighting hand to hand in a quick succession of punches and kicks. She threw the first guard that came at her backwards, watching him collide with a workbench and crumple to the floor before ducking under the punch of another, grabbing his arm with both hands and using his own momentum to flip him over her shoulder, quaking the next guard in the stomach as she released him. She quaked herself over the lab bench to land on the next guard she saw, driving her heel into his stomach as she landed, sending him quickly to the floor and engaging the next guard in hand to hand. As he crumpled to the floor she spun round looking for the next enemy, but only found her mama, an impressed look flying briefly across her face rounding up the cowering scientists.

Daisy left her mama to deal with the scientists and looked around the lab properly, taking in the man on a table in the centre of the lab, his body cut open, a bloody scalpel abandoned next to him.

“Is that an inhuman?” she asked, alarmed. 

“He’s one of the failed experiments.” said a voice from the other end of the lab. Daisy turned round to see a tired and dirty face looking out at them from between the bars of the cell. “Are you here to rescue us?” he asked. 

“Uh, among other things” Daisy said, going over. The man was dressed in a hospital gown, his face dusty, and an air of exhaustion around him that told Daisy the man had suffered, even though he looked unharmed. Daisy quaked the lock on the door and opened it. 

“What’s your name?”

“Derrick Trilston, are you police?”

Daisy recognised that name, this was one of the kidnapped people with ‘further analysis’ blood. “I’m Daisy, I’m an agent in a special ops team of inhumans. Do you know where the others are?”

“They’re d-e-a-d. They never return after the scientists take them.”

Daisy frowned, both at the news and the strange way that Derrick had delivered it. “What do they do with them?”

“They take their b-l-o-o-d and o-r-g-a-n-s, the scientists told us. They said they’re going to give our powers to the volunteers.”

There was a pause as Daisy absorbed this, adding it to the information from the file she’d read before getting caught. “They’re trying to make humans inhuman” she realised, her voice horrified.

“Have they succeeded?” her mama asked from her shoulder, and Daisy glanced back to find that the scientists had been knocked out. 

“I don’t know” Derrick answered “Can you get us out of here?”

“Us?” 

“Are you going to save my Daddy?”

Daisy let out an undignified yelp of shock and spun around to find her mama with a gun (which had  _ not _ been in her hand a moment ago) pointed at a dirty blond figure that barely came up to Daisy’s wa ist . Her mama looked properly shocked for the first time since Daisy met her, and shaken. The child scrambled back, knocking into a stool and sending it crashing to the ground. 

Without a single sound.

“Mama...” Daisy said, silently urging the shaken agent next to her to lower her gun. It had evidently been a long, long time since someone had successfully snuck up on the black widow. Natasha hesitated for a moment, then lowered the weapon. The discomfort vanished from her face as she projected calm towards the frightened child. 

“I’m sorry I scared you, my name’s Natasha.” 

The girl looked at them out of scared brown eyes, but as Nat continued not to make any threatening moves, she stopped shaking and the sound of her breathing reached Daisy’s ears. Clearly the girl used her power instinctively as a defensive measure.

“I’m Julie. Are you going to save my Daddy?”

Her mama glanced up at Daisy, her face for an instant deeply sad, and Daisy understood the message. She didn’t know how her mama was sure, but Julie’s father was dead. She remembered with a pang that the girl’s mother was already dead, cancer just a year ago, and swallowed hard. She looked helplessly at her mama, not knowing how to tell this little girl, who barely couldn’t be more than three years old, that she was an orphan.

A crash from outside though saved them all from having to answer; Derrick spun around to look at the door and when he turned back his face was panicked. “There are twenty guards there. At least”

An inhuman with some visual power then. Daisy looked around the lab, hoping for another exit. There wasn’t one. She sent a quake blast at the door as it started to open, forcing it shut again and her mama ran over to start shoving things in front of the door.

“That won’t hold for long” Natasha warned, and Julie pressed close to Derrick, her whole body shaking with fear, silence enclosing both inhumans. 

“It doesn’t need to. Are there guards behind that wall?” 

Derrick looked, and shook his head, face confused, but Daisy didn’t bother to explain as she directed her power at the wall. It took a lot more effort to vibrate the concrete wall than the air, but she pushed forward with her power. It was only a wall, rather than the solid concrete her cell had been made of and in seconds her vibrations tore a gaping hole in it. She turned back to a stunned Derrick and picked up a wide-eyed Julie, depositing her in Derricks arms and gesturing for them to follow her mama, already through the hole, watching the corridor with wary eyes. The inhuman snapped out of it, hefted the child in his arms, and hurried after the impatient redhead.

\----------

Five minutes later Natasha peered around a corner before leading the others into the deserted corridor. She was trying to lead Daisy and Derrick back to the stairs, intent on getting out of there before one of them caught a bullet or worse. The presence of her daughter behind her was making her even more hyper-alert than she usually was on missions (which was a lot), and she was aware that they’d been in a bad situation even before they’d picked up two helpless civilians.

Because even though her daughter had shown herself to be impressively cool-headed in danger, and an efficient fighter when she really let herself loose (which Natasha was going to talk to her about, she should have been doing that in training; after she finished yelling at her for leaving of course), but even so, the thought of her Pauchok in this hopelessly outnumbered situation was still tying her stomach in knots and distracting her in ways she really couldn’t afford.

As, if she was honest, was the little inhuman girl Daisy had taken from Derrick when he couldn’t keep up. The silence emanating on an off from the girl made the hairs on the back on her neck stand up, and she was still uncomfortably freaked out by the fact that she’d been  _ completely unaware _ of the 3 year old until she’d spoken earlier. But there would be time to deal with that later, just then, she needed to get them all out of here. Alive. Unhurt. And then she needed to lock her Pauchok in a nice safe padded room where no-one would ever threaten her ever again. 

They reached the stairs again, and Natasha took a moment to breath a sigh of relief, before opening the door, gun ready. She stepped through and carefully looked around, glanced up, noted the explosives tied to the bottom of the steps above and  _ lunged _ back towards the door. She wasn’t fast enough.

Daisy was emerging through the open door when she turned, Julie in her arms. Her Pauchok took one look at her face and instantly retreated, but the explosion sounded loudly behind her before Nat was fully through the door. She felt the force of it fling her forward through the air, her daughter a moment ahead of her and Natasha didn’t think she’d ever been so afraid in her life.

Then the ground was rushing up at her and decades of instincts had her tucking and rolling, her arms and shoulders colliding hard with the floor in a way that would leave black and blue bruises, but Natasha didn’t  _ care _ . Daisy. Where was Daisy? Where..there.

Nat felt her heart skip a beat.

Her daughter was lying crumpled against the wall, Julie still in her grip. A dent in the wall showed exactly how her Pauchok had hit the wall and slid down.

_**No** _ .

_No, no, no, no, noooo._

Nat didn’t even process crossing the space between her and her Pauchok, didn’t even register her ears ringing with the explosion, the way her head was swimming. She dropped down next to Daisy, fingers searching desperately for a pulse. Please. Please.

“Owwww” Daisy moaned, and it was one of the best sounds Natasha had ever heard in her life. Her Pauchok’s eyes opened slowly, then closed, her face scrunching with pain. “s Julie ok?”

Nat looked down at the three year old curled white-faced in Daisy’s arms, shaking but appearing uninjured. She appeared to have passed scared and gone straight to terrified.

“I think she’s going into shock” she observed, noting distantly that she wasn’t sure she herself wasn’t doing the same. 

No. She couldn’t go into shock. This wasn’t the place. She was the  _Black Widow_ dammit, she was trained better than going into  _shock._ Compartmentalise. Breathe.

“Why didn’t you roll?!?!” she demanded. 

Daisy sat up slowly, a moan slipping passed her lips before “I was going to hit the wall not the floor. I quaked, but I only had one hand free, so I couldn’t balance it, just reduce the force a bit.”

Natasha saw for a moment a picture of what could have happened if her daughter hadn’t cushioned the blow, and felt sick. No. Compartmentalise. Daisy was alive. Daisy was fi... “Did you hit your head?”

“Not hard” Daisy hedged.

Natasha didn’t bother moderating the glare she sent the younger agent as she matter of factly started running her hands over her daughters head. “You’ve got a small lump” she said “You could have a concussion.”

“Then we’d better get out of here before I definitely have a concussion. Is Derrick dead?” Daisy asked, her flat tone reflecting the heavy hand Agent May had had in her training. Nat wanted to scream that Daisy shouldn’t be working with a concussion, but there was nothing she could do about it. She reminded herself that most agents had worked through a lot worse than a concussion when on the field. She told herself it was comforting. 

Compartmentalise.

She went over to examine the other crumpled figure in the room. Without either training or superpowers, Derrick had come off worst, but was alive. Unconscious and bleeding from the back of his head, but alive.

“He’s just unconscious. Stay there, I’m going to check the stairs.”

The stairs were gone. Nat held back several curses as she noted the state of the stairs. Seven flights had been blown up, five of them above them. They weren’t leaving that way. Grimly she recalled one of the soldiers words from earlier about someone being on the main stair. That meant there were other stairs. They just needed to find them. Injured. With an unconscious civilian and a 3 year old going into shock. Urg, she missed Clint. He’d have made some stupid joke at this point if he was here and it would have somehow made her feel better.

“We’re going to need to find a new route out.” she said bluntly as she turned back to her daughter. 

Daisy was already on her feet, and had laid Julie, almost completely unresponsive, on the ground to strip off her jacket. Natasha saw what she was trying to do instantly and pulled her own off, tying it securely to Daisy’s and using it to construct a sling, tying the toddler securely to Daisy’s front, leaving her hands free. Natasha wasn’t overjoyed about tying a dead weight to her injured daughter, but they couldn’t leave the girl behind. Nor, unfortunately, could they leave Derrick behind, which meant she couldn’t take Julie herself.

A sound from the stairwell had her whirling around, and she internally swore as she realised she’d lost both her guns during the fall. It took precious seconds to locate and grab one of them, and the source of the sounds was already climbing into the room by the time she’d gotten the safety off. Her finger was already on the trigger but she froze as she took in who had just climbed in.

Steve was looking a little charred, his face stained with soot, and he had several cuts and grazes on his face, but Nat was so, so glad to see him. She had almost forgotten that she hadn’t gone in entirely alone, and it seemed Steve’s frontal approach had worked better than her infiltration.

“You took your time” she teased, trying to sound like she hadn’t been panicking over her daughter’s still body less than three minutes ago. 

“You don’t look like you need rescuing” Steve retorted. “Hill’s going to shoot us both for insubordination, I hope you know that. Is that Daisy?”

Nat nodded, feeling a weak smile spread over her face, the situation seeming so much less desperate wither her (mostly) uninjured teammate joining her. One more fighter meant a lot when it was two against a whole organisation, and Captain America was a pretty damn good fighter. “This is Daisy, she’s an agent of Shield. Daisy, this is Steve Rogers, otherwise known as Captain America.”

“Mama.” Daisy said, her tone a cross between stunned and amused “I know who Captain America is.”

“ _Mama??_ ” Steve burst out, and _oh_ , she’d been right. 

Cap’s face was  _hilarious_ . 

“Did I forget to mention that?” she said innocently. 


	14. Chapter 14

Daisy was in a lot more pain than she was willing to admit. Her head, still aching from whatever that screaming had been that knocked her out, had graduated to screaming pain when she hit the wall. She could tell that she was processing everything a second too slow and the way the world seemed to be swimming around her was hardly a good sign. She’d had worse though. The bullet holes in her stomach for starters.

Dizzy or not though, Daisy had no trouble recognising when  _Captain America_ climbed (because apparently there were no stairs anymore) into the room. 

“You took your time” her mama teased, but Daisy could hear the relief in her voice. 

“You don’t look like you need rescuing. Hill’s going to shoot us both for insubordination, I hope you know that. Is that Daisy?” She felt a pang of guilt. It was her fault that they were all in this situation.

“This is Daisy, she’s an agent of Shield. Daisy, this is Steve Rogers, otherwise known as Captain America.” her mama said, turning to her and Daisy couldn’t help staring back at her mama in disbelief because _really?_

“Mama, I know who Captain America is.” she pointed out. 

“ _Mama?_ ” Steve Rogers burst out. 

Ooops.

“Did I forget to mention that?” her mama asked, her voice dripping innocence. Daisy could see the barely restrained humour dancing in her mama’s eyes and felt her lips twitch as Captain America continued to splutter, glad that Natasha wasn’t annoyed at her slip. 

“As lovely as this is Cap, maybe answers could wait until we get out of here? Or at least until we know nothing else is about to blow up.” her mama said, her dry pragmatism not quite disguising the laughter in her voice. 

Captain America (and no, she was  _not_ fangirling) pulled himself together with a visible effort, shot his fellow Avenger a look that said the subject wasn’t by any means dropped, and then looked a bit sheepish “I think I triggered the last explosion coming down the stairs. I’m pretty sure that’s all the explosives though.”

“Is the way you came through clear?” Daisy asked, putting aside the shock that C _aptain America_ was standing in front of her. 

Cap smiled “It is now. I knocked out a whole load of guards, a few scientists and one guy with this scream that felt like being stabbed in the ears.”

Daisy considered for a moment then went to peer through the hole where the door had been (now blown off one hinge and hanging drunkenly to the side). There were bits of stairs left, enough for a good climber to make their way up. She leaned out to try and see how far the destruction went but found a hand grabbing the back of her tshirt and pulling her back in again.

“Not that far Pauchok.” her mama scolded, and Daisy swallowed an irritated comment that she could look out for herself. 

“Do you think you could climb that?” she asked instead. 

Her mama pulled her out the way and leaned out, further than Daisy had been leaning (hypocrite), and hummed.

“Cap? You reckon you can climb that carrying two people?”

“One person” Daisy corrected, knowing there was no way the black widow was going to let her teammate carry her up and so it had to be her she was referring to. 

Her mama glared, but didn’t say anything, and they both moved to let Steve lean out and have a look. “I can take one easily” he hedged, which Daisy was pretty sure meant he wasn’t confident on taking two.

“I can quake Julie and I up to where the stairs aren’t blown out.”

“You’ve got a concussion.” 

“I’m fine.”

“You’re _not_ fine Daisy, I’m not an idiot.”

“I can manage this.” she argued back. Her mama didn’t look at all convinced so she changed tac “Look, I wouldn’t say I could do this if I couldn’t, not with a kid attached to me.”

Daisy watched Captain America’s eyes snap to the lump tied tightly to her front, and his eyes went wide before turning to her mama.

“Not mine” Natasha said, without even bothering to look. “She and that one were prisoners here. Pauchok, are you _sure?”_

“I’m sure.” Daisy said, and she was, mostly. She really wouldn’t risk it with Julie if she thought there was a chance she might fail. She wasn’t sure she wouldn’t pass out at the top, but it would still leave them in a better position than they were in now. And Julie really needed medical attention soon, Daisy didn’t know a lot about first aid beyond dealing with her own injuries, but she was pretty sure shock was bad for a child and Julie had gone into shock almost ten minutes ago now. 

Natasha still looked deeply reluctant. She eyed the remains of the stairs outside and frowned “I’m going first, wait until I tell you to come, ok?”

“Copy that” Daisy said, and her mama gave her one last look before she climbed carefully out onto the edges of what had once been the stairs, grabbing onto cracks and holes in the concrete the explosion had made to balance. There were holes in the wall from bits of concrete that had been dislodged in the blasts, and significant patches of stairs at the very edge of the wall that hadn’t been destroyed. Daisy felt her heart rise up into her mouth as she watched her mama climb out. This seemed like a lot less of a good idea now. What if she fell? Her mama didn’t have quake blasts to catch her. 

“She’ll be fine. Nat’s tough” 

Daisy looked up to see Steve looking comfortingly at her, his hands busy with some kind of harness he was making out of straps he’d pulled out of a pocket.

“Yeah, I know” Daisy said, taking a deep breath and trying to relax, although she didn’t move away from the stairs – if she saw her mama fall she might be able to quake beneath her and at least slow her down. 

“So, what’s the story with you two?” Steve asked, the distraction ploy obvious but the question genuine. 

“Long” Daisy answered “she thought I was dead, I grew up in an orphanage. We only found out recently.”

Sudden understanding lit on the super-soldier's face “Nat said you were an agent of Shield; that’s why she didn’t come back with Clint after she found that Coulson was alive.”

Daisy nodded and went back to watching the rapidly shrinking figure of her mama making her precarious way from patch to patch of ragged steps, clinging to the wall.

“How long have you been an agent?”

Captain America was persistent at this calming thing “A couple of years” she said “Coulson picked me up a few months before hydra came out.”

“Picked you up? Not recruited?”

“Yeah, we were a mobile team back then, we had a plane, called it the BUS.”

“Why did Coulson pick you up?”

“I hacked someone they were interested in and made enough of a mistake that they managed to track me down. Helped them with a mission and then Coulson took me on as a consultant and I started training to be an agent.”

“A hacker huh?”

Daisy floundered for a second, trying to work out how to explain that part of her life without mentioning the Rising Tide. Somehow, she didn’t think he would approve of that.

“I’m good with computers” she finally settled on. 

Mercifully, at that point Daisy heard her mama shouting from above that she had reached the stairs and they seemed sturdy.

Daisy took the out of the conversation with both hands and turned back to the stairs with significant relief. She checked the knots on the jacket sling quickly, tightened them, and took a deep breath. This was rather more daunting to do than to think about and plan. But she’d never been afraid of heights before, nor had she ever backed down from a challenge before and she had no intention to start now. Even if she had a concussion.

She took a deep breath, pointed her palms at the floor and started quaking slowly. It occurred to her then that Captain America probably didn’t actually know about her power, and was just accepting that she could get up because his teammate had. It was good to know her mama had a good team. Then her vibrations increased enough to push her up into the air. She took a moment to balance herself and let the her head stop spinning, then pushed angled her hands to push herself out into the stairwell, simultaneously increasing the vibrations significantly.

She dropped over a metre as she moved away from the ground to quake against, but then the vibrations hit the stairs two flights below and she rose up again, vibrating the air further and further up to push herself into the air. The wave of dizziness and nausea was unexpected, but she didn’t stop the quake, pushing herself further and further up. Her vision went almost completely blurred, but Daisy just saw a closer dark blur infront of her, and then a small red blur. Through the ringing in her ears she heard her mama.

“Forward a bit Pauchok, just a bit further, I’ve got you Pauchok.” 

Daisy felt arms encircle her waste, guiding her in as she reduced her quake and stopped it all together. She stumbled forwards to the wall, then tipped over and puked, her body shaking. Her mama rubbed her back, murmuring soothingly until she straightened up, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand.

“Alright?” her mama asked.

“Been better” she admitted. “I did get up fine though”

There was a pause, and then Natasha half moaned “This is some horrible payback for how  _I_ act on missions.” 

Daisy chuckled, wincing as it sent pain lancing through her head. “I’ve definitely got a concussion” she admitted.

“Cap’s halfway up, we’ll be out of here soon.” her mama soothed. “Someone else can worry about cleaning all this up.”

Daisy winced “May and Coulson are going to kill me”

“No they won’t.” her mama said, “They’re not happy, but they’ll forgive you.”

“I guess” Daisy said, but she wasn’t sure she believed it. She’d couldn’t help but feel like she’d be ‘sent back’ for this. She’d been sent back dozens of time for far less. 

A grunt announced Captain America’s arrival, pulling himself up the edge of the stairs and clambering up. Derrick was strapped firmly over his shoulder. Which reminded her, she looked down at Julie and ran her fingers over her cheek, frowning at the clammy and cold feel of her skin.

“We need to hurry up” she said, “Julie needs medical treatment.”

“So do you.” her mama pointed out.

“That too.” she admitted. 

“Nat, you lead, I’ll follow behind. We shouldn’t encounter much resistance but...” Cap trailed off, and Daisy couldn’t find it in her to complain about the fact that she’d been put in the middle because she couldn’t defend herself properly. Even she could tell that it was true just then. Her head felt worse with every step. She really hoped that Captain America had cleared the path he’d come in by, now their route out. 

The world went blurry and clear and blurry again as she climbed, step after step after step. Miserably, she remembered that they’d started on sub-level 46 and had only made it up around 10 flights before they’d had to get off the exposed stairs. At least the stairs seemed pretty deserted now.

They stopped at some point, and Daisy tried to make her eyes focused as her mama held fingers in front of her face and asked her how many she was holding up.

“Four?” she guessed, trying to sound confident. The pregnant pause told her she’d guessed wrong. She leaned her head tiredly against the wall and closed her eyes. 

“Don’t go to sleep Pauchok.” her mama said. Daisy forced her eyes open to see Natasha’s face looking uncharacteristically worried. 

“I’m ok” she said, automatically trying to reassure her mama. 

“Mmm and I’m a fairy godmother.” 

The thought of tough as nails Natasha dressed up as the pink and frills covered fairies she’d seen in children’s books made Daisy burst out laughing, and she felt a little better. They got up soon after that and kept going, grey step after grey step, blurring together. She exhaustedly noted the yellow numbers painted on the walls as they passed each flight, which had finally fallen to single digits. She’d never hated steps in her life like she did just then. She narrowed her eyes, finding it made the world clearer, and looked around as the numbers reached sublevel 3, then 3, then 1, then finally, finally they came to the door (lock now having a suspicious, shield-edge-shaped crack in it) Cap said he’d come in through.

Daisy felt her pulse rate triple as her vision cleared a little. again and she saw and heard through the ringing the approach of a group of black-clad people.

“ _Daisy!”_ shouted a voice and wait, that was Mack’s voice. Daisy squinted through the blurriness and realised one of the figures was Mack, and that was Bobbi next to him, and May behind her. 

“Mack, get them back to the quinjet, Agent Romanoff, what happened back there?” May ordered, and Daisy didn’t even bother resisting as her partner picked her up bodily. She rested her head on his arm and moaned “Julie needs medical attention. She’s went into shock ages ago.”

“Simmons is in the quinjet tremors, she can look at both of you.” 

“Good” Daisy murmured, and she gave up on the fight to stay conscious, the dark around the edges of her vision closing in, and for the second time in 24 hours she passed out. 

\---------------

When Daisy blearily blinked her eyes open, the first thing she noticed was her head didn’t hurt. The second thing she noticed was that she was the whiteness of the Playground’s small medical bay, and she knew she probably had Simmons and Jeni to thank for her pain free state. The third thing she noticed was May sitting next to her, working on a tablet.

“Mom?” she asked sleepily, and she saw the woman look up. “Did mama get out ok?”

A brief look of intense surprise flickered across her SO’s face before May stilled her expression blank again "Natasha’s fine, Coulson made her go get some rest.”

“Julie?” she asked, a yawn extending the last syllable. 

“Recovering, Jeni got to her just in time. Go to sleep Daisy, everything’s fine.” 

“OK mom” she said sleepily, eyes already flickering shut again, and she sank back into peaceful sleep as her body healed. 

\-------------

When Daisy next woke she wasn’t quite sure what had woken her. May was sitting still sitting next to her bed, but now casting irritated looks out into the hallway where raised voices were carrying over. Probably what had woken her.

“Of course I have clearance I’m _Commander Hill_.” 

Daisy didn’t know that voice, but she gathered from it that this must be the famous Deputy Director Maria Hill, known as much for her refusal to take any nonsense from any agent, - male or female, high level or low – as for her skill in planning and directing operations.

“Not anymore” That was Coulson’s voice, sounding deliberately bland. 

“Not any...Phillip Coulson you know _perfectly well that_....” the voice choked off for a moment then “What aren’t you telling me Phil? Why won’t you, Natasha, Clint or Steve tell me _anything_ about this inhuman agent?”

“I’m sure Natasha will be perfectly happy to sit down and talk about this once everyone concerned are fully healthy again.”

“Oh yes, and I’m sure that Romanoff will have a complete change of character and tell me everything after that.” Hill said, sarcasm dripping off her voice.

“Maria” Coulson said, his voice hinting that his former superior was being entirely unreasonable “I assure you that this is not something you need to know right now.”

“Agent Romanoff went into a dangerous mission half-blind because of your agent and I _don’t need to know_?”

“Yes” Coulson said calmly, and Daisy heard a noise that could only be described as sheer frustration and the sound of someone storming off. A few seconds later the door to the medical bay opened and Coulson came in. He glanced around then came in properly. 

“Sorry for waking you. How are you feeling?”

Daisy shrugged, already fighting a yawn “Feeling a lot better, was that Commander Maria Hill?”

“It was.” Coulson said pleasantly “Go back to sleep, I think she’ll leave you alone for a while now.”

“Thanks dad” she murmured, and wriggled deeper under the covers, letting her eyes close again. 

\----------------

When she next woke May was still sitting next to her bed, but wearing different clothes and working on a laptop rather than a tablet. The indication of time passing was probably also why Daisy felt significantly less tired, and she wriggled up right in bed.

“What time is it?” 

May looked up instantly, setting the computer aside “11.30am. You slept almost a day.”

“Oh” Daisy said, not quite sure what to do with this information “I’m sorry.”

May raised an eyebrow “For sleeping? Because I’m quite sure if you’d tried to resist Simmons would have found something to help.”

“No, for, for everything else.” Daisy said, eyes dropping to the white covers. 

There was a brief silence, and then May said flatly “You left.”

Daisy winced. It sounded so much worse just said like that, as fact as much as judgement. “You did too, after Bahrain.” she pointed out, because she didn’t know when to quit.

“No Daisy, I left the field. I did not go off on my own to take on an _entire underground organisation_ without _**backup**_.”

Daisy cringed at the tone of her SO’s voice, pressing herself into the bed and wishing she hadn’t brought it up. “I’m sorry.” she said in a small voice.

“You could have _died_.” May said, her voice harsh.

Daisy felt tears welling in her eyes and blinked furiously, trying not to let them fall “I’m sorry.” she said again.

She felt more than she saw her mom’s eyes on her, no doubt noting everything her body language was betraying, and her voice softened “Daisy, what were you  _ thinking _ ?”

Daisy squirmed, she couldn’t help it. Her hands found the edge of the covers and she didn’t answer. Her SO had barely said anything, wasn’t even really scolding her but she wanted to burst into tears.

“ _Daisy_ ” her mom said, voice unrelenting. 

“I wasn’t alright!” she snapped “I just, they drugged and enslaved a _pregnant woman_ and now she’s _dead_ and I wanted to make them **pay** for what they’d done.”

“We were already going to go after them, you have to know that.” May dismissed bluntly “Why go off on your own?”

Daisy stared at the white covers, tears blurring her vision “I couldn’t stay.” she whispered.

“Why not?” May demanded, and something in Daisy snapped as words came tumbling out of her mouth in a stream of misery. 

“You were all being so _careful!_ You were going to be so _nice_ and I don’t _deserve it_! That woman is _dead_. She’s dead and she’s not coming back and it’s _my fault_ and I wreck everything I touch and I couldn’t stay so I went alone and I screwed it up and had to be rescued and now Hercules might get away with it all, and I made a mess of it all and we didn’t gain anything and I screwed it all up, no-one will want me anymore and I’m gonna be fired and have to leave and I d-don’t want to be sent back and I’m so stupid and I screwed it all up again and...”

“ _Daisy Skye Romanoff!”_

Daisy froze. Her monologue died on her lips as her mom snapped what sounded like a full name at her in a tone she’d never heard the woman use before. A tone that just stopped her right in her tracks with some combination of her Agent-May-the-Cavalry-shut-up-and-listen voice and something Daisy had never in her life had directed at her. Something Parental.

May pinned her with a look so intensely serious that Daisy couldn’t break it “Daisy, your dad and I don’t  _care_ how much you mess up, we are  _always_ going to want you. And you are not going  _anywhere_ , do you understand?”

Daisy’s throat felt suddenly thick and tight, and she couldn’t make her mouth form words, but she felt her head nodding, and the tears in her eyes spilled over. Her mom made a noise in the back of her throat and stood up, nudging Daisy across the bed a little so she could sit next to her and wrap an awkward arm around her shoulder. Daisy turned into the hug, feeling her body shake with tears.

“I-I’m soorrry” she choked. 

“Shhh baobei, it’s going to be ok. Shhhh” her mom murmured, and a hand came up to gently stroke her hair, soothing her until her tears eased to sniffles and she relaxed against her. Finally she wiped a hand across her eyes and asked a little nervously “How much trouble am I in?”

“A lot” May admitted honestly “but you’re home now. We’ll deal with it together.”

“ok.” Daisy said. Then “May? Thanks.”

She felt more than she saw her SO nod, then she said, voice carefully teasing “What happened to mom?”

There was a second in which Daisy absorbed that, and then in a horrified flood remembered calling not just May ‘mom’ but Coulson ‘dad’ the night before. She felt heat flood to her cheeks “I’m so...”

“If you say you’re sorry I’ll make you do pull-ups every day for a month” May threatened, voice entirely serious. Daisy hastily shut her mouth. She glanced uncertainly up at her SO, and was amazed to find her looking almost, _soft_. The agent caught her eye and said “You can call me anything you want Daisy.”

“R-Really?” she said “You don’t mind?”

May raised an eyebrow, which in May-speak meant,  _I wouldn’t have said it if I did._

Daisy swallowed hard, throat tight again, but managed to get two words out. “Thanks mom.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought it was high time for some more May-Daisy interaction - and also high time they stopped dancing around what their relationship is!


	15. Chapter 15

Once she’d calmed down significantly, May – mom now she supposed – let Simmons come in and made Daisy sit still and be examined. Simmons let her out of ‘jail’ on the proviso that she take it easy (“ _No exercise. I mean it!_ ”) for the rest of the day and never call it jail ever again. Daisy agreed mostly because she wanted her freedom and scarpered before her friend could change her mind. She detoured to the kitchen to inhale three people’s worth of food, then went back to her bunk and showered, relishing the feeling of the hot water washing the grime from her skin. Someone had sponge washed her face, neck and arms, but it didn’t feel the same as a proper shower. She threw on comfortable clothes when she finished, suspecting Simmons would lock her in medical if she even looked like she might be going to train anyway. Someone had picked up her bag from where she’d left it in the abandoned building opposite  _Alcaeus_ and Daisy fished out her laptop and took a few minutes to look up the brief mission report on the (sanctioned) shield assault on the building and the base underneath it. It didn’t include much specific information (that would likely be added later) but it did note that the assault had been very successful and most key members of Hercules had been arrested. The organisation had only been small, so this likely meant that Hercules was finished, so at least some good had come of her unsanctioned investigation. She glanced through the investigations on tracking down and rescuing the inhumans who had been sold (likely to fund Hercules’s other research), then shut her laptop and left, intending to go down to the Cocoon. She wanted to see how Andy and the baby were doing, and she owed her caterpillars a serious apology. 

Her mama was waiting for her when she left her bunk though, leaning casually against the wall.

“Hey Pauchok” she said casually.

Daisy hesitated, unsure what to say. They hadn’t, for obvious reasons, addressed anything about how they’d ended up in underground cells while they’d been escaping those cells. Which meant they hadn’t talked about anything yet.

“Hey” she said back lamely.

“Feeling better?” her mama asked.

“Lots, are you, were you hurt?” Daisy asked, feeling her stomach twist at the thought that her mama might have been hurt because of her.

The black widow shrugged “I’ve had much worse bruises.”

Daisy suddenly realised how fascinating the floor was “You shouldn’t have come after me.” she murmured, almost silent, but she’d forgotten how sharp her mama’s hearing was.

“Yes I should have!” her mama said, moving close to grab her chin and force her to make eye contact as she continued calmly but firmly “Daisy, whatever mistakes you make, you will never deserve to be left to die. I don’t care if you don’t want me to risk myself to save you, that’s not your choice to make. I’m you _mother_ Pauchok, I will _always_ protect you, like it or not!”

Daisy blinked, finding her eyes filling with tears for the second time in less than an hour. She pushed them back with a force of will and nodded her understanding. “I’m sorry for scaring you” she said instead.

Natasha pulled her into a hug “I’m the black widow, I don’t get scared.” she said, then added “But the next time you decide to vanish you had  _better_ bring me along or you  _will_ regret it.”

Daisy gulped “Right, got it, no more disappearing, noted.” she babbled, then caught her mama’s half amused half stern look and felt her cheeks burn red. “I’m going to the Cocoon” she said grumpily.

“Message me before you come back up, Maria will probably be aware you’re awake by then and I want to be there when she corners you.”

“Copy that” Daisy said, not sure if this was supposed to encourage her to take her time or discourage her. Daisy had never even met Commander Hill but she knew the woman was a force to be reckoned with.

\---------

Daisy hesitated outside the Cocoon, gathering the courage to open the door and face her caterpillars. When she entered however she was met with shrill screams and an exhausted looking Andy and found herself gaping at the scene in the usually deserted living room. Despite the fact that they usually hung out in the kitchen or gym, all her caterpillars save Sophie (who was probably at school) were scattered around the room, but that wasn’t the really surprising part. The really surprising part was the three others in the room and the amount of new stuff that had appeared in the five days since she’d last been down.

Andy and the baby boy he was trying to calm down weren’t all that surprising, but the rocking chair he was sitting in had definitely not been there before, nor had the baby bouncer next to the chair. The half empty bottle of milk and white cloth on the table was definitely new too, as were the little pile of soft baby toys on the floor next to it. The really, really surprising part however was the three year old giggling happily on Ben’s knee as the man made shadow animals dance around her.

Daisy watched Ben giggling almost as much as Julie was for a moment before she looked around more closely. Andy, unsurprisingly, looked exhausted. His face was lined with both grief and tiredness, but the look he was giving his son was loving. Her caterpillars on the other hand looked much lighter, Jeni and Lincoln especially looking significantly less haunted than the last time she’d seen them. Arin and Elena were playing chess on one of the sofa’s, the board balanced on a couple of hardback books between them and enough white pieces missing to show that Elena was losing spectacularly. Jeni and Lincoln appeared to be in deep discussion about something, knowing them likely something medical, and Joey sat next to them, ignoring the entire conversation in favour of the knitting needles and wool in his hands. Daisy hadn’t even known the man could knit!

It was Arin of course who noticed her first, but he didn’t bother raising his head and waving until he’d finished his move, so it was Lincoln who exclaimed “Daisy! You’re back!”

“Yeah” Daisy said, instantly feeling awkward again, but instead of giving her the cold shoulder her caterpillars suddenly swarmed her, half of them trying to hug her at the same time and all of them clamouring to know if she was alright. Daisy found herself returning hugs before she really knew what she was doing, feeling more confused with each moment that passed. Finally, she managed to find a moment of relative quiet and found herself asking “Aren’t you guys mad at me?”

“Why would we be mad at you?” three voices asked at the same time.

“I left” Daisy pointed out, feeling distinctly like she was stating the obvious.

“Yes but..”

“You were just...”

“You needed...”

“We should have...” started a tangle of voices, but to Daisy’s relief Lincoln (her unofficial deputy) shushed them all and in the silence that followed said simply “You supported us all and we didn’t even try to do the same back, even though you needed it a lot more than half of us. If anything it’s us who owe you an apology. You needed space and time. We knew you’d be back.”

Daisy blinked for a moment, startled at the trust, then said thickly “Thanks guys”

Lincoln rolled his eyes at her gratefulness and gestured her over “Come and meet Benjy”

Andy’s tired face broke into a smile as she approached, and he offered the now quiet baby to her. Daisy carefully took the boy, remembering to support his head and neck as he was transferred to her arms. “He’s beautiful” she said, awestruck.

“His name is Benjamin Sky Eldridge” Andy said, and Daisy stared at the man like he’d grown a second head.

“What?” she said, sounding stupid even to her own ears.

“Benjamin Amy and I had already decided on, Sky for you and Jeni. I know you two are the reason my son is alive. Jeni told me how you made her stop trying to save Amy so she had the strength to save him. And Jenny really isn’t a boys name. Although I hear your real name is Daisy.”

“But, but if I hadn’t Amy might have lived” Daisy said, guilt coating her voice.

“Your Doctor Simmons told me that my wife had five holes in her stomach and a significant chunk of her spinal cord torn apart, not to mention had lost half the blood in her body before I made it to you, there was no saving her. I love, loved my Amy, but I know that if she’d have agreed with me when I say you did the right thing.”

Hearing the facts stated like that, even in a voice heavy with grief, felt like a weight was being lifted piece by piece off Daisy’s shoulders. Coulson had been right, there was no way there would have been a different result even if she’d sent Amy to hospital, even if she hadn’t stopped Jeni. She’d done the right thing. She’d done the right thing. She’d done the  _right thing_ . 

“I’m honoured” she said finally “And I went by Skye for years, so it sort of is my name too.”

She handed the baby, apparently partly named after her back to his father, feeling incredibly touched by the gesture, and picked up the 3 year old that had been tugging demandingly on her trousers. Julie looked significantly better than she had when Daisy last saw her, her skin looking pink and healthy rather than the clammy pale shade it had been when she’d carried her out of the underground base. She’d clearly been given a bath and someone had somehow found (or more likely, nipped into town to buy) a blue t-shirt with a large smily face on it and a skirt with a ladybird pattern that fit her. She settled the three year old on her hip and directed a questioning eyebrow at the adults around her.

Her caterpillars looked at her, then at Julie, and hesitated. Elena disappeared and reappeared a literal split-second later with a notebook and a pen, and gave them to Joey to write the message. He leaned against her shoulder and scribbled quickly, then handed the notebook to Daisy.

‘Her parents are both dead and she has no family both willing and able to care for her, especially given her inhuman status. Mack said Coulson is looking into possibilities.’

Daisy wanted to growl at the word ‘unwilling’ but she held it back, not wanting to upset the child resting her cheek trustingly against her shoulder. She caught the already fond looks her teammates were giving Julie, and the more responsible look Andy was directing at the girl and made a mental note to make sure Coulson was considering the Cocoon as one of those possibilities. Although knowing the director, she wouldn’t need to.

She let Julie wriggle down from her arms and drag her to see the plush pony someone had given her, and then watched her continue to demand animal shadows from Ben and hoped her caterpillars would continue to be as supportive when Julie couldn’t be distracted from the absence of her daddy anymore and inevitably became hysterical and then miserable and furious for days or weeks. Daisy had seen it before several times with new and very young foster children and hoped that whatever decision was made about Julie’s future, she would have the kind of person who would stick around through that.

\----------------

Maria Hill was standing waiting with her mama when Daisy emerged from the Cocoon several hours later, now with play-dough stuck under her nails and smeared through part of her hair. The Cocoon felt more at ease than it had when she’d arrived though, and she suspected her absence had bothered her caterpillars more than they had been admitting. She wasn’t sure whether to be touched or terrified by this.

Commander Hill looked just as intimidating as the rumours suggested. She wore tight grey combat clothes and had a gun holstered on her leg and a stance that showed she needed none of them to be just as intimidating as May. Unfortunately, her focus seemed to be on Daisy, although she did have the decency or manners to introduce herself before she started interrogating her.

“Maria Hill” she said, holding a hand out to shake. Daisy tried to hide her nerves as she shook it, finding the commander’s grip tight and handshake brisk.

“Daisy” she said, and Hill launched in without further pleasantries.

“So, what’s your history with agent Romanoff?”

“Uhh” Daisy said, looking to her mama for help, unsure if her mother minded her telling the agent and having no idea where to start even if she did.

“Didn’t Coulson say he wanted to be present for this conversation?” her mama said idly.

“Phil said a lot of things.” Hill dismissed “Answer the question agent.”

“Maybe we should go to Coulson's office first?” Daisy deflected, and Hill scowled in frustration.

She turned and marched up the hallway, muttering “ _perfectly happy to talk my ass_ ”

Daisy cringed, not really sure that winding up the superior and seriously intimidating officer was really a good idea. Her mama just seemed amused but Daisy had the feeling that the black widow actively enjoyed winding up top brass so that wasn’t necessarily a good sign.

Both her mom and dad were in the office when they arrived, which Daisy was definitely not going to admit (aloud anyway) was comforting, especially as her mom gave no indication of the slightest intention to leave.

“I see you’ve tracked down my agent” Coulson said casually as Hill shut the door behind them and secured the office. Daisy had a sneaking suspicion that that was more to slow them down if they tried to leave than prevent listeners. She wondered how long her parents had been refusing to answer questions, and whether she was supposed to do the same.

Commander Hill wasted no time (rather suggesting that her parents had been deflecting for quite a while) and turned to Daisy with an intensity she usually only got from her mom (her mama usually hid her intensity beneath layers of casualness) and asked again “What’s your history with Agent Romanoff? Report!”

Daisy looked at her dad, trying to ask with her eyes what she was supposed to be doing.

“As much as I admire your loyalty agent, I am not leaving until one of you gives me answers, so start talking or I’ll start disciplinary process.”

“Agent Hill, Daisy is my agent....” her dad started in a pleasant but iron voice, but her mama didn’t bother with manners.

The redhead was suddenly between her and commander Hill, stance radiating threat “Back off Maria!”

The brunette gestured in irritation between them “This, this is what I’m talking about! You don’t get like this with  _anyone,_ even Clint! What kind of history do you two have that you’d disobey a direct order not to go in?”

“I’ve disobeyed a lot of direct orders over the years.” her mama said “That’s hardly unusual.”

“That’s not something to be proud of Nat!” Hill said, her tone long suffering, but her mama had already turned her attention back to Daisy.

“It’s your choice Pauchok. You can say as much or as little as you like.”

“All Agent Hill _needs_ to know is that you two have a history, if you don’t want to say anything else we’ll back you.” her dad said warmly. 

“I’m standing right here! And I will decide what I do and do not need to know!” Hill barked, turning to Coulson “And since when have you joined team insubordination?”

“You’re technically not my superior anymore” Coulson pointed out. May snorted with laughter from her position leaning against the desk next to Coulson, she looked more amused than anything else. She met Daisy’s eyes and raised an eyebrow in question. Daisy mouthed her answer back and glanced at the arguing senior agents, Hill getting more and more annoyed and Coulson blithely ignoring this and remaining pleasantly polite.

“Daisy doesn’t mind.” May interrupted, effectively cutting across both agents and ending the argument.

Hill turned to her with an expression a cross between relieved and irritated that despite her former (and unofficial current) rank no-one would tell her anything without a junior agent’s permission. “Talk.”

“Hey, ease up Maria” her mama protested and Hill looked for a moment like steam could have come out of her ears.

“Uh, what do you already know?” Daisy asked hastily, because as much as the protectiveness was touching, she didn’t really think another argument would help their case.

“I’ve read your file.” Hill said.

“I haven’t.” Daisy pointed out.

“I thought you were a hacker?” the senior agent said.

Daisy shrugged “It wasn’t worth getting into trouble for if I got caught. So I don’t know what’s in it.”

“Not much is. You practically didn’t exist before you were picked up. No birth, schooling, or medical records. Brief reports of your missions before and after hydra came out. The report of the 084 shield mission in Hunan, China. A report very briefly summarising who you turned out to be and the events at Afterlife and the Ilyiad. A significant amount of paperwork related to the team you now lead. Nothing, not one _word_ that might suggest you even meeting Natasha never mind having any kind of history with her!”

“That’s because it was really recent. Or a really long time ago depending on how you look at it.” Daisy said. Hill just looked impatient so Daisy decided to just be blunt “Agent Romanoff is my mother.”

Whatever possibilities the commander Hill had thought of, given the stunned look on her face, that had not been one of them. She recovered remarkably quickly “That would explain rather a lot.” she said. Then she turned, looking suddenly apoplectic to her mama.

“I suppose, _Romanoff_ , that you decided that having a child wasn’t something you thought counted among the ‘important things about my former life that shield needs to know’? That document that you signed and swore was comprehensive?”

Her mama shrugged “You know I didn’t trust you back then, I wasn’t going to tell you about Daisy.”

“And the almost two decades after that?” Hill asked waspishly

“I visited Hunan a couple of years after that.” her mama said, voice tight.

Hill nodded her understanding of what her mama wasn’t saying, sympathy flashing across her face, and Daisy abruptly realised that appearances aside, Natasha and Maria Hill were actually pretty good friends. “When did you find her again?” Hill asked, dropping the subject of important information that should have been mentioned.

“When Clint and I came to confirm that Coulson wasn’t actually dead which, on the topic of important information being omitted...”

“We already talked about that Nat, stop changing the subject.” Hill said, but she sounded significantly more relaxed now she’d been given the information she was looking for. “I’m assuming given you came here a month and a half ago and haven’t said anything since that this isn’t to be public knowledge?”

“I’m going to tell the team” her mama said “but I’d rather do it face to face. Steve knows now.”

Hill’s lips twitched, then tugged out into a full smile “That conversation must have been fun.”

Her mama chuckled “You should have seen his face.”

“Make sure you get a photo of Starks” Hill said, before turning back to Daisy.

“I assume this won’t negatively affect your performance on the field?”

Daisy shook her head.

“And I trust you are done going off on unsanctioned solo missions?” the commander asked more sternly, and Daisy nodded again hastily, “Sorry ma’am” she said shamefaced.

“You did a good job of it under the circumstances, probably saved Derrick Trilston’s life. But don’t do it again. And don’t call me ma’am”

“Yes sir” Daisy responded.

“Or sir”

“Call her Auntie Maria” suggester her mama, face alight in a wicked grin.

“Call me Auntie Maria and I will use you for target practice” Hill said, her tone not changing in the slightest during the threat “You can call me Maria or Agent Hill. Speaking of which, you need a legal name.”

“Why? I don’t technically exist.” Daisy pointed out.

“Its convenient, and your paperwork ought to have a full name.”

“Daisy Skye Romanoff” her mom said from her position against the desk. “I’ll update the paperwork.”

“Mayson” Daisy blurted before she could stop herself. She groaned inwardly as she realised what she just said and knew she was turning red _again_ , but continued “Daisy Mayson Romanoff, uh, if that’s ok.” she risked a glance up at her mom and dad and found both of them looking deeply touched. 

“Daisy Romanoff Mayson.” her mama said, tone sad but firm “If you call her Agent Romanoff in the field you’ll paint a target on her back.”

Her dad nodded “That ok with you Agent Mayson?”

Daisy nodded, her cheeks hurting with the size of her smile. Hill looked between them all and sighed “No wonder I couldn’t get anything out of you lot.” she complained, but there was no heat to it. “I hope you know what you’ve gotten yourself into Agent Mayson, because you’re certainly never getting out of it!”


	16. Chapter 16

Maria didn’t stay for much longer after that, but she did take a moment to take Nat aside and suggest she tell the other 3 Avengers and Pepper sooner rather than later. Nat promised her friend that at the latest she’d tell the others when they next all met up, and to do her best to get an image of Starks face when she did.

When she got back from seeing Maria off she found her Pauchok in the kitchen, catching up on the last five days with FitzSimmons and the older three agents. Nutella was purring happily in her daughters arms as Daisy scratched behind her ears. As she arrived Bobbi, Mack and Hunter were leaving to go spar, Simmons shouting after Bobbi that she said ‘ _light sparring!’_ . Nat wasn’t entirely sure there was such a thing as light sparring, but she somehow doubted that agent Morse would thank her for pointing that out to Simmons so she just leaned against a counter and listened to Daisy asking questions about the material Benjy Eldridge was dressed in and the research they’d started into restraining inhuman powers (rather than just containing) to make life safer for both Benjy and those around him in the long run. Nat supposed that meant the baby and his father were staying for the time being. 

Ten minutes later the topic of conversation had moved on from inhuman baby clothes through inhuman baby health and to just how cute Benjy and Julie were. At that point however Hunter came back into the room supporting Bobbi and said over her loud protests “Bob needs some painkillers, and probably her knee brace.”

“I do _not_! It’s just twinging, and I didn’t land that badly. He’s just over-reacting, I’m fine!”

Simmons instantly transformed from the excitable but the unassertive scientist she usually was into Doctor Simmons “I’ll be the judge of that agent Morse. Hunter, could you take her through to the lab please. Bobbi, you really shouldn’t have been doing anything that risked landing on your knee  _at all_ , I said  _light_ sparring only...”

The sound of her scolding continued as she followed the older agents down the corridor and Fitz shook his head in amusement after his friend. “She still has no bedside manner.”

“To be fair” Daisy pointed out “She’d probably have a better bedside manner if she wasn’t head medic for a base of uncooperative agents.”

“That is true.” Fitz conceded “She won’t be back anytime soon regardless, want to come play some xbox? No one else is as good as you are and it’s no fun if your partner keeps dying halfway through a level.”

“Sure, you want to come mama?”

As always, Nat felt a burst of warmth in her chest at the name, and almost forgot but “Wait, you’re grounded! I’m pretty sure you can’t play video games while grounded!” She thought so anyway, she was pretty sure Cooper wasn’t allowed video games when grounded.

Daisy gaped at her “You were  _serious??_ ”

Nat raised an unimpressed eyebrow at her Pauchok indicating that yes, she  _had_ been serious about grounding her daughter for disappearing for 4 days and getting into a dangerous situation without backup, even if she had been only semi-conscious when she said it. 

“But, but mom already yelled me for it!”

Nat was about to protest that she hadn’t at any point shouted at Daisy, but then she processed the phrasing and realised that ‘mom’ had to be May and no, whatever that feeling in her chest was it  _wasn’t_ jealousy. And anyway, Daisy had called her mama  _first_ ! “You went into an organisation you knew practically nothing about’s home base without any form of backup and could have died a dozen times over. So yes, you’re getting in more trouble than a lecture.”

“But we live on a spy base! We hardly ever leave except for missions anyway! What does grounded even mean?” Daisy protested.

That was a good question, Nat wasn’t actually sure what the answer was “It means no video games.” she decided “Go find Coulson and ask for some paperwork to do.”

“But..” Daisy protested, face falling ever further at the mention of paperwork. Nat just raised an eyebrow at her daughter and gave her the stern look she’d found quite effective (it worked on the caterpillars when she’d trained them too). Her Pauchok’s shoulders slumped and she waved a miserable goodbye to Fitz and headed off to find Coulson. Nat tried not to feel guilty.

“Right, I guess I’ll uh, go back to the lab” Fitz said, looking awkward, and vanished.

Nat looked around the empty kitchen and then glanced at her watch, then at the rota taped to the back of the kitchen door.  _Technically_ it was May’s responsibility to cook dinner tonight, but Nat had some time and she could cook that chicken casserole that even Laura said was nicer than hers (a high compliment because Laura was an incredible cook) for  _her_ daughter. 

\-----------------

May’s blank face twitched when she realised Nat was cooking dinner for her but all she said was “Thanks. Tell me when you need me to cover your turn.” and left to finish the inventory she’d been taking in the armoury.

Nat finished the rest of the cooking with a smug smile on her face, leaving it to simmer on the cooker as she got some jobs done on her laptop. By the time 6.30 rolled around (the unofficial dinner time at the Playground) the casserole smelled amazing and the rice she’d started cooking alongside it was just finished. Most of the rest of the core team (and Nat wasn’t sure when she’d started thinking of herself as part of Shield as well as an Avenger again) had trickled in over the last ten minutes, laying the table between them, but at thirty five past six Daisy was still missing.

Daisy was always on time for meals, she was always starving by the time mealtimes rolled around and so was usually early. Nat couldn’t stop herself from worrying, just a little bit, that Daisy had left again. But she’d seemed fine when she’d gone to find Coulson and paperwork – grumpy, but fine.

Still, “Coulson, when was the last time you saw Daisy?”

Coulson looked up from his conversation with May “Half an hour ago, I left her doing paperwork in my office. You want me to go get her?”

“No, I’ll go.” Nat said “Go ahead and start.” She had a strange feeling that she was going to be a while.

She headed quickly across the base to Coulson’s office and climbed the stairs. She had almost reached them when she heard the muffled sound of choked sobs drifting down from the office.  _Daisy’s choked sobs_ . She half ran up the stairs, opening the door and looking round for her daughter. She located her by sound more than vision, the agent sitting on the floor beside Coulson’s desk, back pressed against the wood and knees drawn up to her chest, crying like her heart was breaking. She somehow curled even tighter as she heard Nat enter, trying to choke off her tears and failing miserably. 

Nat almost flew across the room to her, dropping to the floor next to her and pulling her Pauchok into her arms.

“Daisy! What’s wrong? Whatever it is, it’s going to be ok sweetheart, we’ll fix this, I promise. What’s wrong Pauchok?”

Daisy froze for a moment, then curled into the hug like she was drowning and Nat was dry land. She clung to Nat and buried her head in her shoulder, shaking with sobs and appearing to almost be trying to vanish into Natasha she was clinging so tight. Nat squeezed her back just as tight with one arm, rocking her slightly as she ran a hand over her hair, trying to bury her panic as Daisy started to calm down, remarkably quickly.

“I’m Sor-ry” Daisy eventually said, shakily.

“No! No, Pauchok, you don’t have to be sorry for breaking down! We all break down sweetheart, it’s not healthy to keep it all inside.”

“Not f-for this” Daisy sniffled, pulling back a little to wipe her eyes “For leaving.”

“Is that what this is about?” Nat asked, trying to hide the sudden horror she was feeling “Because I grounded you?”

Daisy burrowed closer again, her next words muffled into Nat’s shoulder, but she heard them “I thought you might not want me anymore, because I’m trouble.”

Nat felt suddenly, horribly stupid. And guilty. How had she not thought of this! Daisy had been a foster kid most of her life, she’d been ‘sent back’ too many times to count, of course she would associate getting into trouble with being sent away. “Oh Daisy, I’m so sorry.” she whispered “Of  _course_ I still want you. I will  _always_ want you sweetheart.  _Always_ . I  _love_ you Pauchok.”

“You do?!” Daisy asked, shocked awe in her voice and Nat realised she’d never come out and said it like that. She felt panic stirring in her chest at the thought – love is for children. Love compromises you. Black Widow’s do not love. – but shoved it down.

“Yeah Daisy, I love you” she repeated “And I always will. _Always._ No matter how much trouble you get into.”

Daisy slowly let out a breath, then all the tension in her body flowed out of her in a wave and she collapsed almost bonelessly into Nat. She ran a hand over her daughters hair, cuddling her Pauchok to her “You’re still grounded Daisy, that's not changing, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to spend time with you and it’s just for two weeks, ok?”

“ok” Daisy said “Uh, what does grounded actually mean on the base though?”

Nat, who still hadn’t really worked that out, thought quickly “It means no video games, and no tv or movies with the team. It means an hour’s extra training every day, and an hour of paperwork. And it means no nutella,” she said, on a sudden burst of inspiration “the food, not the cat.”

Nat almost burst out laughing at the look of outrage on her daughter’s face at the banning of chocolate spread, but she swallowed it and continued “But it doesn’t mean no Chinese lessons with” she hesitated, steeled herself slightly “your mom, and it doesn’t mean no evening time with me. And it doesn’t mean no time with your caterpillars, you need each other.”

Daisy was clearly still feeling outraged at the ‘no nutella’ edict, but she looked happier at the reassurance that time with her parents and caterpillars wasn’t forbidden.

“And” Nat finished “it means you have to come down and get some food, because you must be starving and I made chicken casserole for you.”

Daisy frowned in confusion “Wasn’t it mom’s turn to cook?”

Nat just smirked, and she saw the exact moment her Pauchok decided she didn’t want to know. “Never mind. I’m going to go wash my face”

Daisy headed towards the door before she stopped suddenly “Did you call me sweetheart again?”

Nat, suddenly realising she’d called Daisy sweetheart several times that evening, winced “Just add it to the list of things we’re not telling Clint!”

\--------------

Being grounded sucked, but if Daisy was honest, that was mostly the paperwork and missing nutella, she didn’t really mind the extra training, although there had been a tense moment between her mom and mama when May had glared Nat down and said  _she_ was Daisy’s SO and  _she_ decided how much Daisy trained. Her mom had backed the extra training though, although she insisted on taking almost all of it herself (She asked Coulson about it, and about whatever it was that was happening about food, and he just looked amused and said it was probably best to just leave the two of them to it. Daisy filed the whole thing under ‘don’t ask’ and did.). She enjoyed the extra time with her mom though, especially as morning training had mostly become group training with her strike team caterpillars (Lincoln, Ben, Elena and Joey; Arin was mostly a tracker and was still learning basic combat and Jeni was focusing on her medical studies rather than on combat). 

Her caterpillars had finally been cleared for wider missions given their performance when everything went FUBAR, and they had stepped up training significantly in response. In the mornings the rest of the caterpillars came up to the main base to train with Daisy, Mack, May, Natasha and the couple times he’d been around, Clint. They worked on hand to hand combat, both without and (as much as was safe) with powers. Arin practised with a rotating collection of people when they were free while Jeni went to work with Simmons.

After a couple hours of early morning training her caterpillars would disappear down to the Cocoon for tactical training and other less tiring jobs and Daisy would spend a couple of hours doing computer based spy work. After lunch and a brief rest, she and Mack would head down to the Cocoon to train with the strike team in coordination and cooperation, working not just on combat but on working and coordinating as a team. By the end of two weeks they had been on two missions as a team and each time Daisy could see marked improvements in they way they all worked together, needing to directly communicate through words less and less, and getting the job done that much more quickly and smoothly. She could see the team coming together and couldn’t be prouder of them. In celebration after their first successful non-welcome-wagon mission, they’d all sat down together and brainstormed until they all had a codename. Daisy stayed as Quake, and Elena (despite protest) stayed as Yo-Yo, but Lincoln was named Volt, Ben became Puppet (for the shadow puppets he used in combat as well as fun), Joey became Smelt, and Mack (despite loud protests that he had no superpower and so didn’t need a ‘superhero’ name) was named Axman by Elena in revenge for ‘Yo-Yo’ - although they had yet to actually use Mack’s codename on mission. Arin, despite not yet being part of the strike team was named Hound short for Bloodhound, Jeni was just named Medic (because she  _refused_ to be called Stitch or Patch even though she was basically stitching and patching them up) and Sophie named herself Portal and refused to consider anything else. 

A couple of hours of team based training with her caterpillars was followed by a couple hours babysitting, in which they would take Benjy and Julie off Andy so he could get at least a couple solid hours sleep. Daisy wasn’t much good with Benjy but Joey (who was knitting the baby a blanket) adored him, as did Jeni and Arin. Neither Lincoln nor Elena were really children people but both were happy to watch either kid for a while in the rare cases it was needed and as for Ben and Daisy herself they had both fallen in love with Julie from day one.

Daisy  _had_ remembered to raise the Cocoon as a possibility for Julie, but it turned out she hadn’t needed to as not only had Andy also raised it but Coulson had already been considering it. While Benjy had mostly stopped using his powers unless in extreme distress (which for the baby, meant after he’d been screaming for a good ten minutes) Julie had a more conscious control of her gift and liked to use it, which given her age and the accompanying low levels of restraint, made her unlikely to be able to pass as normal and therefore highly vulnerable. Not to mention the fact that her wider family remained unable to give the young inhuman a home. Coulson hadn’t confirmed anything yet, but Andy had spoken briefly to Daisy about schooling options for Julie in a couple of years and she strongly suspected he’d started adoption proceedings. 

Daisy had briefly called Derrick (who had left before she’d even woken up – wanting nothing to do with another shadowy organisation) to check that he was alright, but had been bluntly and not especially politely told that he was doing fine and didn’t need or want help. Daisy would have been more sympathetic if he hadn’t left Julie with a shadowy organisation he didn’t trust without a second thought. She wasn’t sure she was sorry that Derrick would not be joining the caterpillars, even if his x-ray power was undoubtedly useful.

And the Cocoon didn’t really need anyone else anyway. The already lively and humour filled base (you couldn’t have anything else with a bunch of people working out how to use their new superpowers) had only gotten brighter and closer with the addition of the kids. Both kids, despite difficulties, were a source of joy, and the effect they were having on the Cocoon was reflected in the toys and kids stuff now scattered everywhere in the base. Andy, who Daisy was realising had an inner strength to rival her dad’s, was father and mother to both kids, but the rest of the caterpillars were a constant presence in their lives as aunts and uncles. Jeni and Arin did as many night feeds and changes as Andy did, soothing Benjy back to sleep and allowing the grieving man time to get more rest. Ben and Daisy stuck around, holding Julie while she screamed and cried for a daddy they all knew was never coming back. Even at three years old Julie knew what dead meant, and when (as gently as possible) told she had asked shakily “Like mommy?” and Daisy had cried almost as much as Julie had.

So Andy, Ben and Daisy stuck around and supported Julie as much as they possibly could through the tears and tantrums that came every day, along with the subdued playtimes. Daisy spent several nights sleeping on the floor in Julie’s room because the child was terrified of sleeping alone and the nightmares that often woke her up. Julie had had several sessions with Andrew Garner (as had Andy and all the caterpillars had had at least one session with him) but they all knew it was going to be a long road.

Which wasn’t to say that Julie was never happy, because while there  _were_ hours of tears and screaming, there were also periods of smiling and games, and they all did what they could to make those times as long and good as possible. Julie loved listening to Andy read her stories, or playing with Ben’s ‘farmyard shadows’ or being strapped to a harness on Daisy’s back while she flew around the base, both of them giggling loudly. She was also beginning to really enjoy her powers, and Daisy suspected her gift went beyond silence to being generally unnoticed when she wanted. She’d managed to sneak out of the Cocoon after Daisy or Mack no less than three times, the third time remaining unnoticed until she shouted ‘ _Boo_ ’ from behind Natasha Romanoff of all people. Her mama had jumped a mile, let out an actual, audible scream and almost shot the kid (with an icer, but still). Daisy and FitzSimmons who had also been there at the time had laughed so hard they’d cried, and her mama had spent the next week looking behind her every other minute despite Julie giving Daisy a solemn promise (unbreakable apparently to the child) that she wouldn’t do it again. 

Overall, Daisy could tell that, in time, the Cocoon was going to become home for both inhuman kids and Andy the honorary inhuman.

An hour before dinner usually was Daisy would hug Julie goodbye and head back up to the Playground for an hour of one of one training with May, sometimes sparring and sometimes doing strength or speed drills. By the end of it Daisy would usually be exhausted, and would half-doze through a shower before dinner. Inhaling more food than Bobbi, Mack and Hunter put together (not a small feat) usually revived her, although dinner was sadly followed by an hour of paperwork, her mom and dad making full use of her mama’s edict to pass on paperwork. Paperwork however was followed by either a Chinese lesson with her mom and dad or a something else (it changed constantly) lesson with her mama, both of which could more aptly be named (but none of the involved people except Coulson would even think about saying it out loud) family bonding time with bits of learning. Then she’d head back to her bunk (if it wasn’t her night with Julie) to do some online Christmas shopping until she was too tired to even focus on the screen and then go to bed, sleep like the dead, and get up to do it all again.

Her days were so full that she barely even noticed them passing, and the last day of the two weeks arrived without her even realising it until her dad excused her from the last hour of paperwork early so she could go and pack.

“Pack?” Daisy said, confused.

Her dad shot her an amused look “You are still going to the Barton’s aren’t you?”

“It’s the 23rd already?!” she said startled and then “Oh, that was why Lincoln, Elena, Joey, and Arin were packing!” 

Her mom snorted “Maybe we should work on general awareness again” she teased.

Daisy laughed, taking it in good humour and enjoying the way her mom relaxed when it was just the three of them. She was just about to leave to do that packing when her mama knocked on the door and came in, Uncle Clint in tow.

“Do you have a minute?” Nat asked, directing the question at Coulson.

“Please don’t say you’ve found something that needs dealing with now” Coulson said, sounding less like the director and more like a junior agent with their down time interrupted.

“Nothing like that.” Clint said, flopping down on Coulson’s sofa “As far as I’m concerned anything short of the world ending can wait until after Christmas.”

“Good to know.” her mom said dryly “What’s up?”

“You know how you promised to visit the Avengers? Well, Stark throws this party every year on Christmas eve” her mama began, but she didn’t get to finish.

“No” her mom said.

“I’m supposed to be dead.” her dad pointed out.

“I wasn’t suggesting going to the actual party!” her mama protested “But everyone will be gathered by mid-morning, even Thor, and I don’t know when we’ll all be together again unless an Assemble is called, and an Avengers level emergency isn’t the best time for a reunion...”

Neither May nor Coulson said anything for a while, but they exchanged looks, communicating silently and finally May said “We leave well before the party starts”

“Great” Clint said “That ok with you Daisychain?”

“Don’t call me....wait, _I’m coming too_?”

“You don’t have to” her mama said quickly “not if you don’t want to.”

“No, no, I’m happy to come, just, your taking me to meet the _Avengers_!”

“You’ve already met half of us.” her mama pointed out.

“The other half don’t know I exist yet though.”

“You’ll get to appreciate Tony’s face when we tell him though.” Clint pointed out “And I promise, it will be awesome!”

“I, umm, ok then” Daisy said, trying to hide how nervous the idea of meeting the rest of her mama’s family all in one day (because they’d already planned to fly to the Barton’s for Christmas eve) made her.

“They’re going to love you Pauchok” her mama soothed. “Come on, I’ll help you pack.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we finally get to the rest of the Avengers and the Bartons next chapter!


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So good news bad news: Good news, I've finished writing this story so I'll be updating every day now. Bad news, there are only 4 more chapters (not including this one). I'm kinda amazed I've reached the end of this, I've never written anything this long, never mind in the space of 5 weeks! Anyway, here's the Avengers chapter! I'm not quite happy with it, but I'm not sure what else I want to do with it, and I'm not sure if that's just me being a perfectionist, so I'm posting it anyway!! Hope you like it!

The next morning Daisy sat kicking her feet nervously against the side of the quinjet, her mama next to her and her shield parents opposite. They had been in the air for less than half an hour but it already felt like hours since she’d exchanged presents with and said goodbye to Bobbi, Mack, Hunter, FitzSimmons and the caterpillars still in the Cocoon. She’d promised Julie she’d video call every single day until she got back, and cuddled the little girl until even the 3 year old cuddle machine was satisfied. She didn’t want Julie to feel in anyway abandoned, or to worry that she wasn’t going to come back.

Now though, that felt like long ago, and the time before she met her mama’s team felt terrifyingly short. In half an hour they would be landing at  _Avengers Tower_ and this was really not what she’d thought she’d end up doing when she’d first joined shield as a consultant. Then again, she hadn’t expected to gain superpowers or actually find her parents either. Never mind find 2 insane parents, an Avenger parent and two adoptive parents. Daisy took a brief moment to reflect on the insanity that her life had been the last two years (and was shaping up to be for the next two as well with the Cocoon essentially adopting two inhuman kids) and then went back to being nervous. 

“Hey, Daisychain? Want to start learning how to fly?” came her Uncle Clint’s voice over the sound system, and Daisy almost jumped up, remembering at the last second that she should probably ask her SO first. She sent her mom a pleading expression.

“Don’t try to land” May said, and Daisy took it as permission and headed into the cockpit before her mom could think better of it. May had taught her all the controls and switches already, explaining them to her rookie en-route to missions, but she’d never actually flown before. Excitement and concentration distracted her thoroughly as her uncle guided her through her first actual flying experience, and she entirely forgot to be nervous until Clint took over again to land the quinjet, bringing it down in five minutes on the landing pad near the top of Avengers Tower. She automatically released her seatbelt, but then remained frozen in her seat, her hands feeling lost without a gun and comm to check before an op.

“C’mon Daisychain, they won’t eat you.” Clint said, and then “And if they try I’ll shoot them in the butt.”

“You can’t shoot your teammates” Daisy said, but she did get up, trying to ignore the butterflies in her stomach.

“Sure I can, wouldn’t be the first time either.”

“ _What?_ ” Daisy spluttered

“Oh c’mon, Thor and Hulk are arrow-proof and Iron Man’s red and gold suit just _screams_ target.”

“And Stark practically begs to get shot” her mama agreed, picking up the thread of the conversation without needing any context. “Just don’t shoot Steve, he gives you this disappointed look and tells you its irresponsible, makes it awkward.”

Daisy heard her dad sigh “I’m not sure I want to hear this. I thought I taught you better than shooting everyone who annoyed you Clint.”

“Stark is a special case” Clint said smoothly. “Everyone ready?”

Daisy swallowed hard, knowing that by  _everyone_ Clint really meant her. “Ready.”

Her mom gave her a look which would be unreadable to most people but Daisy knew was supportive, and her dad reached over to squeeze her shoulder quickly. Daisy took a deep breath and followed her mama out of the quinjet. If nothing else, she knew she could count on her parents (all 3 of them) and uncle Clint.

Agent Hill was waiting for them outside the quinjet, wearing casual clothes and smiling but still giving off an aura of supreme capability.

“Good flight?” Hill asked by way of greeting, and they all murmured some affirmative, Daisy grinning to herself at the thought of her success controlling the quinjet. “Everyone’s in the lounge catching up, you’re the last ones here.”

_Great_ Daisy thought sarcastically, but she followed the group down the stairs, falling back with her mom, figuring that the Avengers would want to catch up with her dad before anything else. She heard the Avengers before she saw them. 

“Lady Natasha and the Hawkeye! Our party is now complete!” said a deep and over-loud voice

“Oy, Nat, Legolas, you’re late!” Daisy was pretty sure she recognised that as Stark from media clips she’d seen him in.

“Let them sit down before you antagonise them Tony” scolded a cool female voice which Daisy was going to assume was the famous Pepper Potts.

Daisy arrived in the room just in time to hear several voices call out “Coulson!” in surprise and one voice announce “Son of Coul! Its good to see you in good health again.”

“Good to be in good health again” Coulson said pleasantly, “I apologise for the deception, it was uncertain for quite some time if I would remain alive.”

“How are you alive if you don’t mind me asking, Clint could hardly tell us anything about that drug you said you were given?” asked Dr Banner, coming closer to shake Coulson’s hand.

“That’s because we don’t really know anything, other than it was derived from Kree blood.”

“Maybe you could talk about it later?” suggested Captain America, also coming over to shake her dad’s hand, then her mom’s. “Agent May, good to see you under better circumstances. Agent Daisy, likewise.”

Daisy smiled nervously back at Steve as Stark turned suddenly to her. “You’re that Daisy Mayson Steve and Maria won’t tell me anything about. You don’t exist! Anywhere! Not even a birth record!” he looked so deeply offended about this that for a moment Daisy just wanted to burst out laughing, and somehow, it made her feel significantly calmer.

“I was a hacker before I joined Shield, I deleted myself.” she explained.

“ _I_ should still have been able to find _something._ ” Stark complained “I suppose you’re also the reason I can’t hack into new Shield?”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.” her dad said, loudly.

“I’m _not_!” Hill snapped, glaring at her employer. 

“You work for me, you can’t do anything.” Stark protested, then hesitated “Right?”

Hill gave him a look that said she very definitely  _could_ do something, and was going to make sure it was highly unpleasant. Stark gulper nervously and hastily changed the subject as both Thor and Dr Banner laughed. 

“So, who are you then?”

Daisy glanced up at her mama, silently asking for her to tell her team herself. Natasha calmly closed the distance between them and wrapped a warm arm around her shoulders. “Everyone, meet Daisy, my daughter.”

There were several seconds of dead silence in which Dr Banner looked surprised, Ms Potts studied them looking for similarities, Thor started to look excited, Tony Stark did an excellent impression of a fish out of water and Agent Hill took a photo. The flash of the camera seemed to snap everyone out of it, all at once.

“Congratulations Lady Natasha! To be blessed with a child is a great fortune.”

“Nice to meet you Daisy”

“A pleasure to meet you Miss Romanoff, Tony, stop gaping. Maria, please don’t post that online, I’ll make sure he stops trying to hack Shield.”

“You, you, how long, _you have a daughter!?!?!_ ” 

“That _is_ what I just said Tony” her mama said, tone wickedly amused. 

“Nice to meet you too, although it’s Miss Mayson actually” Daisy replied to Dr Banner and Ms Potts, realising as she did so that Bruce Banner managed to look surprisingly normal for someone she knew to be a genius and could turn into the Hulk. And that Ms Potts looked every bit as professional as her reputation suggested but somehow also seemed like exactly the kind of person who would tell her boyfriends team about skyenet hacking his system and pranking him. Not that Daisy was going to raise that just then, even if it would undoubtedly be hilarious. Even if she was tempted.

Stark meanwhile was finally pulling himself together, well, sort of anyway. “How did this  _happen?_ ”

“Well Tony” Clint began “When a man and a woman love each other very much...”

“ _Clint!_ ” her mama and dad said at the same time, and her uncle shut his mouth with a smirk. 

“It’s a bit of a long story” her mama said.

“Maybe we should sit down” her dad said.

“Good idea dad” Daisy agreed, and then froze as she realised the implications of calling Coulson ‘dad’.

There was another flash as Agent Hill took a photo of the looks of utter Horror on Steve Rogers and Tony Starks’ faces.

“Uhh, I’m sort of adopted.” Daisy said “He’s not actually biologically, he and mama never, uhhhhhhh.”

For a moment she wanted nothing more than for the ground to open up and swallow her. Then, mercifully, Clint started snickering behind her, followed by a strangled sound from agent Hill, and then both of them and her mama as well were howling with laughter, and even her mom was chuckling. Her dad continued to look supremely awkward for a moment before he too started laughing and Daisy began to see the funny side of it.

Half an hour later they Daisy found herself sitting on a sofa next to her mama watching with some amusement as the Black Widow glared at Hawkeye, while Stark looked like he’d just been given all his Christmas presents at once.

“You watched her _sleep_? Oh this is gold, the big bad Black Widow watching her daughter sleep.” 

“I’m going to get you for this bird-brain.” her mama promised with deadly intent.

“Worth it” smirked Clint.

“Wouldn’t have pegged you for a helicopter parent.” teased Steve

“Oh you’ve no idea, you should have seen her picking out a kitten for Daisy!”

Daisy noticed three things in quick succession, the fresh glee on Stark’s face, her uncle Clint moving, and her mama lunging at the space he’d been an instant before. She hadn’t even realised Nat was about to move it happened so fast. It was in moments like this that Daisy realised all over again just how well her mama and uncle knew each other. An instant before Natasha lunged Clint had leaped up onto the top of the sofa, and from there jumped through the air, grabbed the top of the window, opened the ceiling vent with his other hand and vanished, his partner seconds behind him.

“Great” sighed Ms Potts “They’ll be chasing each other around the walls for hours now.”

“And in the meantime” Stark said, turning his attention on Daisy “You can tell us aaaall about mama spider.”

“Sir, Natasha and Clint seem to have acquired guns and are shooting bullets I do not fully recognise.”

“Are they tinged blue JARVIS?” agent Hill asked, voice tired.

“I believe they are Commander Hill.”

“They won’t kill each other then.” the agent said unconcernedly, sounding entirely too casual to be discussing two of her team chasing each other around the building. Steve just sighed. Daisy had a sneaking suspicion this was a regular occurrence.

“So, about this kitten” Stark said, turning his attention back to Daisy with a grin on his face.

“I’m not sure mama would want me answering all your questions” Daisy deflected, pretty sure her mama would know _exactly_ where the man had got his teasing fuel from.

“And you always do what your mother tells you to?” Stark mocked

“Uh, you have _met_ my mama haven’t you?” Daisy pointed out.

Stark paused for a moment, given that was a pretty good point, then “What if I let you see JARVIS’s code? I can see the questions all over your face.”

Daisy wavered, after all, her mama wouldn’t actually kill her, and whatever revenge she might take Daisy was pretty sure it would be worth it to get a proper look at the AI’s code. JARVIS was incredible. It would be worth it. Probably.

“I want it on the record that I have no part in this.” her dad said, voice resigned.

“I’ll tell you about the kitten and when she made a blanket fort with me, but nothing else. And you have to let me look at the code _and_ promise to stop asking questions.” she bargained.

“Deal” Stark said instantly, “we can talk on the way down to the lab.”

Two hours later Mr Stark had become Tony and they were both arms deep in JARVIS’s code, which was even more intricate than Daisy remembered from her brief foray into SI when she was 17, although obviously she didn’t mention recognising any of it. Having explored various parts of the code, the AI himself chiming in at various points, Tony had started fiddling with it, looking like he couldn’t help himself. Five minutes later Daisy too was fiddling with the code, having been unable to resist when she’d seen a section that could be  _so much more efficient_ if she just changed a couple of things and added one or two lines of code.... Tony Stark was a genius, there was no other way to put it, but he was a better engineer than he was a computer scientist, and Daisy had hacked the pentagon when she was 12 using a library computer and wifi. Not that the man couldn’t keep up, once he’d realised what Daisy was doing, he’d joined in, and ten minutes after that they had left JARVIS’s existing code alone for the moment and were designing a completely new section to improve the AI’s websearch and hacking abilities. 

Part way through coding, both now sitting hunched over computers, her mama had dropped into the lab, Clint behind her, and by dropped Daisy meant it literally as they arrived viya the air ducts. Both now had wet hair and different clothes on, and Clint was sporting an elaborate sharpie moustache which may have looked less strange if it wasn’t drawn on his forehead.

“Doing alright Pauchok?” her mama asked

“Great, have you _seen_ JARVIS’s code?” Daisy said, looking up for a moment

“Had a look once, couldn’t make much sense of it, you having fun?”

Starks head popped up “Lots.” he announced “Remind me to tease you about making blanket forts.”

Her mama’s head snapped towards her, Daisy winced “He bribed me!”

Her mama gave her a  _look_ .

“I could have told him about Julie, or that time I came back from mission injured...” Daisy pointed out, then gulped at the glare her mama sent her.

“No more stories” Nat said, the _or else_ going unsaid but clearly meant. 

Clint mouthed from behind her “What about Julie” and Daisy gave him a smirk that translated to,  _ask me later._

“No you won’t” her mama said “Not unless you want me to tell you about the incident in Changmai.”

Clint spluttered in outrage “We agreed to never speak of that again.”

“Nuh-uh, you agreed.”

Clint pouted “Fine, I won’t ask.” he sulked, then brightened and mouthed “Where she can hear” at Daisy.

“Anyway, we came to get you, we’re going to have a late lunch together and then we need to go if we want to get there by a decent time.”

“Yeah, to wherever you go every year that you won’t tell any of us about. Anyone would think you were hiding something.” Tony said, clearly sulking.

“We are hiding something” Her mama and uncle chorused together. Stark glared, but there was no heat behind it. Daisy got the feeling that this was just how they got on best. The members of the former Strike Team Delta just smirked at Stark with identical grins that had probably once driven Coulson, Hill and Fury up the walls of the helicarrier and turned to the door. Daisy gave her coding a mournful look and followed them. She knew none of her parents would let her skip the meal to finish it.

“I’ll send it to you” Tony said, giving his own work a similar look.

“I’ll give you my email.”

“I can find it myself.”

“I’ll give Agent Hill my email for when you give up.”

\------------------------

Lunch with the Avenger’s was  _interesting_ . To start with, they didn’t so much sit around a table as spread half a shop’s worth of bread in various different forms and just as much sandwich toppings across a table and wander to and from it to get food. They then leaned against various pieces of furniture and ate standing up, with plates frequently set aside to allow for elaborate hand gestures. Or not set aside if you were Thor, which led to two flying sandwiches, both of which somehow managed to be caught without hitting the ground and returned in similar fashion. Then there was the fact that there were at least fifteen different conversations going on at once, and most of the people in the room seemed to be participating in two or more at any given time. There was also the fact that everyone except Ms Potts was an active agent (because who was Agent Hill kidding, she was  _not_ retired) and ate accordingly, with the added fact that Steve and Thor ate even more than Daisy did. The pile of food which at the beginning of the meal appeared unfinishable went down with impressive speed, and somehow all the bread and most of the toppings got finished. 

There was also the fact that Daisy followed enough of the conversation she heard Tony and Dr Banner having to be uncomfortably aware of the fact that if you left them and FitzSimmons in the same room for ten minutes they would completely re-write the rules of science as humanity knew them and then proceed to irreparably break the universe in the testing stage. Although, from listening to Ms Potts talking with Steve and agent Hill, she suspected that the woman was capable of supervising all four of them at once and preventing the end of the world with sheer willpower alone.

Then there was the argument between all the Avengers except the Hulk about whose weapon was the best (which devolved rapidly into insanity when her mama tried to argue that her body could count as a weapon given she dealt with as many people with her bare hands as she did a gun or her widows bites, and Tony made a comment that made Ms Potts smack him around the back of the head, which her mama said made her point about not needing other weapons, at which point her mom joined the argument) which ended in Thor setting the room on fire demonstrating mjolnir’s lightning summoning. Daisy watched Ms Potts calmly ask JARVIS to enact the ‘minor-fire-extinguishing-protocol’ and take another bite of her sandwich and realised that the Cocoon might actually be pretty calm for a base full of powered people, even with the kids. She also realised that the Avenger’s were every bit the bickering siblings her caterpillars were.

It was with mingled disappointment and relief (the Avenger’s were exhausting) that Daisy said goodbye to most of the Avengers and headed back up to the landing pad. Her mom and dad followed, leaving the Avengers to exchange Christmas presents while they said goodbye. Daisy instantly claimed a hug from her dad, promising she’d spend next Christmas at the Playground and Cocoon. Her dad’s muttered ‘you better’ but resisted the urge to pout again. Her mom just said ‘Don’t be late back’ which meant  _I’ll miss you,_ especially given the agent had allowed a hug without even looking annoyed about it. Daisy just came out and said it, hugging both her parents tightly and reminding herself she’d see them again in a few days. 

And then they were taking off again, now in a different quinjet as her mom and dad were taking the one they’d flown in on back to the Playground. Clint let her take the controls again once they were properly in the air, and he and her mama hung out behind her, having a casual conversation and kicking each other out of the co-pilots seat every ten minutes. The flight was twice the length of the one to New York, and by the time her mama took over to land the plane Daisy thought she was getting the hang of flying a plane, although she thought quake flying was distinctly more fun. She also thought however that she’d rather like to take off again and fly around for another couple of hours rather than meet the rest of the Barton’s, but she didn’t mention that. She’d just met the Avengers, being nervous about meeting Clint’s wife and kids was silly. Even if it felt ridiculously similar to turning up at another foster family’s door already knowing they were going to send her back in a couple of months. Which was silly, because they were leaving after Boxing day anyway, and this was her mama’s extended family and Clint liked her so with all likelihood his family would too. So there was no reason to be nervous. None at all. She’d been nervous before meeting the Avengers, and that had gone fine. Apart from calling Coulson dad before anything had been explained. And the fact that her mama might be planning some terrifyingly creative revenge for her selling teasing material for code. Apart from those things. Totally fine.

And then it was too late to run because her uncle was already throwing open the front door and calling “Honey, we’re home.”

Daisy followed her mama nervously into the farmhouse, taking in the collection of shoes and wellies scattered by the door along with various balls and skipping ropes and two toy bows. A tall blond woman came into the room just as doors banged open somewhere upstairs and running feet heralded the imminent arrival of her uncles kids. Her cousins Daisy supposed. And the woman embracing Clint had to be Laura Barton. Mrs Barton pulled back from the embrace after a few seconds and turned to Daisy.

“You must be my niece” she said warmly, and before she knew what was happening Daisy found herself being hugged too. Laura Barton smelled like cinnamon and cookies and she pulled Daisy into a proper hug not a polite one, but didn’t squeeze so tight that she couldn’t instantly get out of it if she wanted to. Daisy liked her immediately.

“Daisy Mayson,” she introduced herself “Thank you for having me Mrs Barton.”

“Oh, you can call me Laura, or Aunt Laura, we’re family, and you don’t have to thank us, you’re welcome here. And you’ve saved me from having to attack Nat with a spoon again.”

Daisy smiled, sensing the woman was completely sincere in the sentiment “Aunt Laura then. Wait,  _again_ ?”

“ _Daddy_ ” shouted two voices, announcing the arrival of the footsteps, and Daisy saw two small figures half pounce on Clint. 

“Yes, again, those two idiots pranked my cooking.”

“We only did it once” her mama said in ruefully.

“Daddy, why do you have a moustache on your forehead?” Asked the taller of the figures, who Daisy guessed had to be Cooper.

“I drew it” her mama said smugly, catching the attention of the smaller and blonder of the figures.

“ _Auntie Nat!!_ ” Lila Barton squealed, running at her mama, who scooped her instantly into her arms with a familiarity that for an instant made Daisy feel almost sick with envy. Then the 4 year old turned to look at her shyly and Daisy realised she was being ridiculous. She was 26, she knew how to share. 

“Are you my cousin?”

“Yeah” Daisy said, dropping down to Lila’s level to be less intimidating, “I’m Daisy.”

“I’m Lila, why did Auntie Nat never tell us about you?”

There was an awkward silence.

“Lila, Mom told us not to...” started Cooper, but Daisy interrupted.

“It’s ok. Umm, sometimes, when bad things happen people don’t want to talk about them. Mama, Auntie Nat I mean, thought something very bad had happened to me. Thats why she didn’t talk about me. ”

“What happened?” Lila asked curiously

Daisy glanced up at her new Aunt, unsure whether she was overstepping. She settled on a compromise, the truth, but only part of it “Some bad men came to my home, and tried to take me away, but some good people kept me safe, but they didn’t know where I came from, so they gave me to other people to look after.”

“You grew up without your mom?” Lila asked, eyes wide with sadness.

“It’s ok” Daisy said quickly “I have her now, so it all came out ok.”

Lila paused, thinking about this, then she nodded “I like you” she announced “you tell me things.”

Daisy restrained the urge to wince, realising that probably meant she shouldn’t have said anything.

“It was a good explanation.” Laura said “Now, kids, Daisy is also an agent, like your daddy and auntie, so that means....”

“No running or jumping at her when unseen, no shouting boo and remember to knock.” the kids chorused together.

“Can you shoot a gun?” Cooper asked, the 7 year old looking at her hopefully.

“I can, but I’m not demonstrating for you.” she said, anticipating the next question.

Cooper wilted a little in disappointment then “Can you pick locks?”

“ _Coop_ I said you had to be 10 before you could learn that.” Clint scolded. 

“I was just _asking”_ the kid sulked. Then brightened up “Can you do crazy computer stuff? Brian from school’s dad works at a computer company and he’s set up Brian’s screen to flip or spin when he presses certain keys!!!” 

“Oh that’s easy!” Daisy said, perking up at something she could (responsibly) do “I bet I can find something _way_ cooler to do.”

“But not before dinner.” Laura said smoothly “Go wash your hands you two.”

The kids scampered obediently off and her aunt turned back to her “Don’t let them nag you into doing stuff” she said.

“I won’t” Daisy said, then “sorry for telling them about my past.”

Clint waved the apology away “We were going to have to tell them something.”

“I meant it when I said it was a good explanation.” Laura said “Now you three go wash your hands too, knowing you you’ve been diffusing bombs or something on the way here.”

“Hey.” her mama protested weakly “We had a perfectly smooth and uninterrupted journey for once.”

“Wash them anyway” Laura said, and her husband mock saluted and gestured for Daisy to follow him into the house.

“Leave your bag Daisychain, we can take it up later. Get your priorities straight, food first!”


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for brief mention of past attempted rape towards the end of the chapter. Nothing at all graphic but I've marked when to stop reading and when to start again in bold capitals. Please don't read it if it's going to upset you.

Dinner with the Barton's was the most normal and domestic thing Daisy had ever felt fully included in. They had a sort of domestic around the Playground and Cocoon of course, but normality was a little lacking when on either base, and this felt different in some way. This was an almost normal family, with a mom and dad and two kids, sharing a meal after a long day with some extended family around. The kids demanding the adults attention to listen to the stories of their day and gentle reminders from the parents to sit properly. In some ways it was terrifyingly similar to far too many scenes from her childhood, a ‘family’ meal at a foster family, listening to her foster siblings talk about their day and sitting separate and lost. Except at exactly the same time it was entirely different because, while Lila and Cooper where talking on top of each other in the way only over-excited kids could, her aunt Laura took advantage of every pause to pepper Daisy with questions about her life. And Lila and Coop called Laura and Clint ‘mommy’ and ‘daddy’  and  Daisy didn’t feel the stab of envy she’d always felt as a child, despite Lila trying to monopolise her own mama’s attention in the attempt to tell her everything that had happened in her life in the last several months. And the looks Cooper and Lila sneaked at her across the table when they thought she wasn’t looking weren’t hostile or possessive of their parents but genuinely curious and excited. And when, near the end of the meal, the kids finally exhausted the list of things they wanted to tell their parents and aunt about, that curiosity could clearly no longer be restrained and Daisy found herself with 3 people asking questions, and  _genuinely wanting to know the answers_ . 

“Do you work with daddy stopping bad guys?” Cooper wanted to know. The agent thing seemed to be the most important thing to him.

“Sort of, I stop bad guys but I’m part of a different team.”

“Like the Avengers?” Lila asked excitedly

“A bit, but we’re cooler.” Daisy said, smirking at her uncle across the table.

“Are not!” her mama and Clint protested together.

“You’re all baby agents! No way are you cooler!” Clint continued

“Hey! My ‘baby agents’ could take the Avengers!”

“They could _not_ ” her mama protested, mock offended. 

“Could too” Daisy teased “Volt or Smelt could both take Iron Man right out, Portal could dump Hulk in the pacific, Puppet’s shadows could totally deal with Captain America, even you two can’t sneak up on Hound and Yo-Yo and I could totally take you guys and between Volt, Smelt and a containment unit we could probably contain Thor for a decent while.”

“Assuming it all went to plan” Clint pointed out “And Portal and Hound aren’t even part of the team yet. Plus, you’re not irresponsible enough to leave Hulk unsupervised, Puppet would find Cap harder than you think, Thor is pretty much impossible to contain and there is _no way_ you and Yo-Yo can take us! Iron Man I’ll give you.”

“Please, give Yo-Yo an ICER and one of FitzSimmons electric buttons and she could take all three of you!” Daisy said, still teasing but wondering as she did whether her caterpillars genuinely could take the Avengers.

“Only if we line up for her, and one good shot at where she started...” her mama pointed out.

“You’d still be down.” Daisy grinned

The two Avengers scowled, knowing she was right, but “What about the Hulk, Portal’s still too young.” Clint said smugly.

Daisy shrugged “Fair point, I could probably keep him busy, but only for so long.”

“You could _not_ ” her mama said, voice suddenly not teasing “And you’re not to try!” 

Daisy caught the edge of panic in her mama’s voice and was about to reassure her that she had not actual intention of going against the Hulk when Cooper joined the conversation again.

“Who are Volt and Yo-Yo and, the others you said?”

“They’re my team, we all have code-names. But you probably haven’t heard of us yet because we’re pretty new.”

“Do they have superpowers?” Lila asked, practically bouncing on her chair in excitement “Do you???”

Daisy glanced up at Clint in question, and he nodded permission.

“They do, and I do, although I don’t think we’re really as good as the Avengers.”

“Don’t sell yourself short.” Clint pointed out “The caterpillars are a pretty good team.”

“A pretty good green-as-grass team” Daisy pointed out “We need experience.”

“ _What can you do???_ ” Lila and Cooper shouted together

“Indoor voices” Natasha, Laura and Clint all said at once, and the kids simmered down a bit, pouting.

“I vibrate things” Daisy said, and both kids slumped against their seats.

“That’s boring” Cooper said sadly.

“Cooper!” Laura scolded, but Daisy just grinned.

“I didn’t know flying and blowing things up was boring.” she said casually, shrugging.

“You can _fly_?” Lila squealed

“You can make _things explode_?” Cooper added

“Can I see?” both kids wanted to know.

“ _No_ ” her aunt said, firmly and instantly.

“It’s more of a controlled hover, but yes, and most things explode if you vibrate them hard enough. But I’m definitely not demonstrating that!”

“What about flying” demanded Cooper, turning to his mom “Pleeeeaaaaassssseeeee”

“I’ve taken Julie flying with a harness” Daisy offered, caught her younger cousins enthusiasm.

“Maybe” her aunt allowed “But not tonight.”

“Yayyyyy” both kids said, and Laura gave Daisy a look easily translatable as _we’re all going to regret this._

Daisy shrugged “Haven’t regretted flying Julie around yet.”

“Those two are bigger than Julie” her mama pointed out.

“I’ll be fine for short flights” Daisy said, just as a clock out in the hall struck the hour. Both Lila and Cooper froze, as if by being still the adults wouldn’t notice them. It didn’t work. Clint sent both kids upstairs to change, pointing out that it was already past Cooper’s bedtime.

“But it’s Christmas eve!” tried Lila hopefully

“So you need lots of sleep for tomorrow.”

“Lila got to stay up late, I should get to too” Cooper tried.

“It’s time you were both in bed.” Laura said firmly.

“Can I have a bedtime story Auntie Nat? Please?”

“A short one.” her mama promised, grabbing Lila’s hand and tugging her towards the stairs “Pauchok, it’s almost Julie’s bedtime Cocoon time” she reminded Daisy as she left.

“Oh, yeah, I should call” Daisy said, “uh, if thats ok?” she asked Clint.

Her uncle waved her off with a “I still want to hear about Julie later!”

Daisy grinned mischievously at her uncle and left to find a quiet corner to call Julie.

\---------------

Natasha thought that the day had gone as well as it possibly could have. She’d known her Pauchok was really nervous about meeting her family, both the Avengers and the Bartons, and she was proud of her for agreeing to meet them anyway. Nat knew that they were still only just digging into the issues with family Daisy had, but she knew they were making a lot of progress. She could have done without Clint and Daisy handing out stories about her, but she was glad Daisy was making a separate link of her own to the Avengers. And it wasn’t like she didn’t have her own material on both Clint and Tony, the latter of which was still blissfully unaware of just who it had been who hacked JARVIS and programmed him to sing ‘I know a song that will get on your nerves’ all those years ago. And Maria had those photos....

Daisy meeting Laura and the kids had gone almost exactly as Nat had expected it to. Daisy had been overly polite, Laura had waved it away entirely and announced Daisy was family, and the kids had asked careful questions from a safe, shyness defined distance until a certain point had passed and then started asking every question they could think of, and Daisy was now and forevermore the cool older cousin with superpowers, forever a Barton in feeling if not name or blood. Just like she was. A fact that Nat, even all these years later, still found amazing.

She pretended she didn’t hear Clint announce he still wanted to hear about Julie as she led her god-daughter upstairs, directing her to the bathroom to brush her teeth while she hunted through Lila’s messy room to find the pyjamas she’d used last, before giving it up as a bad job and pulling a clean set out the of cupboard. Five minutes later she was sitting on the bed with Lila reading the next chapter in ‘Heidi’.

She’d missed Lila. Despite the fact that she’d cried her eyes out after holding her for the first time, and then disappeared for five months, terrified to face the memory of another baby girl, she had been regularly around since then and loved Lila Barton deeply. If Clint had complained (without heat) that Lila was an ‘aunties girl’ it was only because Nat adored Lila every bit as much as the girl adored her. She’d spent countless similar evenings reading the girl bedtime stories and countless afternoons teaching the hyperactive child to do handstands and forward rolls or just running around with Lila clinging giggling to her back. Her fridge at Avenger’s tower had had a collection of Lila’s artwork stuck to it over the years. (Which she’d fed anyone who asked a series of ever more ridiculous reasons to the point that Tony was convinced she and Clint were exchanging secret messages viya the artwork on their fridges. Both she and Clint were having great fun subtly encouraging this idea.) So even though she didn’t regret taking the time to get to know Daisy and show that she intended to stick around, she had missed Lila. Now that she was back to more regularly taking missions, she would probably start dropping by the farmhouse more often again. Maybe Sophie could send her and Daisy to a city nearby to visit every so often.

She reached the end of the chapter and set the book aside, leaning down to give Lila the customary hug before she tucked her in.

“Auntie Nat?”

“Yeah butterfly?”

“Do you think Daisy minds that you’re my Auntie Nat?”

Well that was unexpected. “Why would she Lila?”

“Sometimes I don’t want to share mommy or daddy with Coop” Lila said seriously.

“Well, I don’t think Daisy minds sharing, and even if she did, I would still spend time with you butterfly. You’re important too.”

“But she’s your daughter.” Lila said

“And you’re my niece.” Nat said seriously. “Do you mind sharing your mommy with Daisy? She’s her aunt you know.”

Lila chewed her lip “I don’t mind if she doesn’t mind sharing you” she decided.

“Then it’s ok then.” Nat said, adding “And you know what, I have to share Daisy too.”

“Really? Who with?”

“Well, Daisy has a mom and dad too, because she was adopted by some people she works with, and I have to share Daisy with her team, and with Daisy’s own niece, and now I’m sharing her with you and Coop too.”

“Daisy has a niece too?”

“She does, but it’s well past your bedtime little butterfly, you can ask her yourself in the morning.”

“Ok. Goodnight auntie Nat!”

“Goodnight, your mom and dad will be up in a minute to say goodnight.” she promised, kissing Lila on the forehead before she left.

She met Laura on the stairs down and paused to tell her sister in law that Lila was all ready for bed before continuing down. She and Clint generally cleaned up from meals because Laura generally cooked. This was because Nat could only cook a handful of meals well and Clint could make a ration pack taste good and absolutely nothing else. So Laura cooked and they cleaned up. She arrived downstairs to find that Clint had vanished, probably saying goodnight to Cooper before saying goodnight to Lila, and Daisy was filling the sink with hot water.

She grabbed a tea towel and joined her at the sink “You ok Pauchok?”

Daisy looked up, a soft smile on her face “I’m good. Lila and Cooper are nice kids.”

“They are,” Nat agreed “growing up more quickly than I expected though.”

“Hmm?” Daisy asked

“Lila asked me about you.”

Daisy stiffened for a split second reaching for the next plate “Why would she ask that?” she asked, sounding  _almost_ perfectly normal, and if Nat hadn’t been the black widow she would have missed both signs entirely. 

“She wanted to know if you minded sharing me” she said, watching Daisy sharply out of the corner of her eye.

Daisy almost dropped the plate “If  _I_ minded!?! But, but, this is  _her_ family.” she  chocked . 

Oh.  _Oh_ . “Daisy, this isn’t a foster family.” Nat said gently, then added “Everyone is happy you are here. Lila literally just told me that she didn’t mind sharing Laura and Clint if you don’t mind sharing me.”

“If _I_ don’t mind! Lila thinks, she, you’re...” Daisy cut herself off “I need to, to go.” she said, backing towards the door, hands still wet. Nat could see a panicked need for space written all over Daisy’s body language and thought quickly, weighing up what to do. 

“Don’t go beyond calling distance.” she said. Daisy made a choked sound of relief and her slow backing towards the door became a full out run. “Take a coat!” she shouted after her daughter, hoping she’d made the right decision.

“Where’s Daisy going?” Laura said from behind her, and Nat spun around, biting back a curse word. She’d been too focused on Daisy to hear Laura coming down the stairs and she could feel her heartbeat doubling.

“She’s getting some space.” she said finally.

Laura raised an eyebrow prompting and when Nat didn’t say anything asked “Why does she need space?”

Nat sighed, trying to work out how much to say “Daisy has had rough experiences of family settings, I think she just got triggered. It’s her story though, that’s all I’m saying.”

Laura nodded, accepting this, and moved to take over the washing up. Nat shooed her away, trying to bury her worry in the familiar scene “Go sit down. Clint will be down to help in a minute” she scolded.

Laura huffed but moved to make some tea instead.

“And how are _you_ doing Nat? Clint told me about Daisy going rogue for a bit.”

“It was weeks ago” Nat said, dodging the question, although the memory of Daisy being missing and possibly dead made her hands want to shake.

“And you probably haven’t talked to anyone about it unless Clint made you.” Laura said comfortably.

Nat hesitated, washing a couple of plates and setting them on the drying rack (Clint could catch up when he got down), finally she sighed. “I’ve never been more afraid in my life.” she admitted, “And you know the scariest thing about it?”

“Hmmm?” Laura asked.

“She’s still an agent.” Nat said “She’s safe _now_ , but she could catch a bullet every time she goes on mission. Or _worse_ given the kind of missions that her caterpillars are likely to get. They’re Shield’s second Avengers, as soon as they gain some experience they are going to get all the biggest, most dangerous missions. And maybe she’ll have her team, but that doesn’t mean she’s _safe!_ ” She hadn’t realised, until she said it out loud, just how deeply she wished that Daisy wasn’t an agent. Despite all the ways Coulson said Daisy had grown since joining Shield, despite the fact that she wouldn’t even have found her daughter again if she hadn’t, some part of her wished that Daisy had stayed a hacker, stayed behind computer screens, safe and distant from the things that could tear her apart. “And you know the very worst part about it?” Nat said, letting the defeat and agony bleed into her voice “The very worst part is that I have to let her, because Daisy _believes_ in shield, she _believes_ in helping people, and it would destroy her to even try and make her stop. And she’s going to spend her life running towards bullets so that other people are safe and there is _nothing_ I can do about it.”

“You _are_ doing something about it,” Clint said, arriving just in time to pick up the end of her monologue “you’re training her, teaching her everything you can to give her an edge. May mentioned that you’re even training her caterpillars, and you hate training baby agents.”

“Caterpillars???” Laura asked

“Don’t ask.” Clint advised.

“It doesn’t feel like enough” Nat whispered “I’ve had more training than _anyone_ else I know and I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve been shot, the times I’ve nearly died.”

“But you’re still alive” Clint pointed out “And you may be tougher than pretty much anyone else but Daisy heals way faster than you do, crazy fast even, I mean, she broke her ribs and cut her leg open and she was fine the next day! Not to mention her team have Jeni around to patch them up.”

“That doesn’t mean she might not still die.” Nat whispered

“No,” Clint said, voice heavy “it doesn’t. But traffic laws don’t mean a car couldn’t still run Lila or Coop over. We can’t keep them safe Nat, we can only teach them how to be as safe as possible on the road.”

Nat sighed “I know.” she said, the words unnecessary but for once she needed to say them out loud. Needed to make herself say them.

Clint grabbed her wet hand and squeezed tightly for a moment, then grabbed the tea towel, letting the routine job surround them until the gut-wrenching thoughts about everything that could possibly happen to their kids seemed a little more distant. Laura had mugs of strong tea ready for them when they finished, and they sat in silence, two agents who had seen just about everything and one former agent who had supported them through all of it. Three parents facing the fact that they couldn’t always keep their children safe.

\-------------

Daisy slipped back in half an hour later, when they had all moved to the sitting room and were nursing the last of their tea over a meandering conversation about nothing in  particular. Nat heard her coming before she arrived, and scanned her as she entered. Her hair was windswept and her cheeks pink with cold, but she looked a lot calmer than she had earlier and something in Nat relaxed at the sight. 

“Hi” Daisy said awkwardly “Sorry for running off.”

“Pauchok, you don’t have to be sorry for needing space.” Nat reminded her “Least of all to me” she pointed out. 

Daisy thankfully laughed at the reference to her panic run and came to sit next to her. Nat held one arm out in invitation and her Pauchok instantly wriggled closer, snuggling into her side. Nat wasn’t about to admit (even with only Clint, Laura and Daisy to bear witness) that she liked the cuddling just as much as Daisy did, but she wrapped her arm snugly around Daisy’s shoulders and returned the side hug. “Want to talk about it?” she asked gently.

Daisy was silent for a few moments, clearly working out what to say, and when she spoke her voice was soft “In the foster system there are two kinds of foster siblings, other system kids, and foster parents real kids. To us it always seemed like the real kids had the first right to them. I never thought I’d have someone who a kid would assume  _I_ had first right to, would wonder if  _I_ minded sharing them.” 

“Well, things are different now” Nat said “And they’re not going back to how they were. And for the record, you always had just as much right to those people as their biological kids did, they took you into your home, you should have had that right.”

Daisy smiled sadly “Maybe, but it often doesn’t work out like that.”

Nat wished, not for the first time, that it wasn’t an irresponsible and immoral use of her training to go and beat up the collection of nuns and foster parents that had made love so scarce in Daisy’s childhood.

“Well it works like that now.” she said, then, to drive her point home she asked “What would you do if someone treated Julie or Benjy like that?”

An instant later Daisy was sitting bolt upright, a look of fury on her face at the mere thought. After a moment she slumped back to the sofa “I take your point.” she admitted.

“Good” Nat said

“So you grew up in the system?” Laura asked, her voice gentle, somehow communicating without a word that Daisy didn’t have to answer the question if she didn’t want to.

“Yeah.” Daisy said, voice heavy with memories Nat knew she wouldn’t enjoy hearing “A shield agent left me there with a hidden protocol to move me around every three months. Kept me safe from Hydra and my insane dad and step-mom but didn’t make for a great childhood.”

“How did you get from there to shield?” Laura asked.

“Various things, of various levels of illegality.” Daisy said, tone only half-joking.

“Is it ok to ask what those things were and how they happened?” Laura asked, her voice that openly genuine tone that had made a fairly newly deprogrammed Nat both trust her and (mistakenly) think she was a naïve idiot the first time she’d met her.

“It’s not a very nice story” Daisy said uncomfortably

“It’s your story though” Laura said, and Nat could practically see Daisy caving in the fact of Laura Barton’s warmth and instant acceptance and genuine wish to know and understand Daisy.

**TW: STOP READING HERE**

“Well, I stole a bunch of money from a bank when I was 16 and left a computer trail to my foster dad before running off, which was pretty illegal. Although, he tried to rape me which I think is more illegal, so maybe I get a free pass on that one.”

Breathe. Breathe. She needed to breathe she reminded herself. “He _what_?” Clint asked voice coated with the exact same brand of _deadly_ that Nat knew was dancing in her eyes just then. 

“He tried to, uh” Daisy suddenly caught up to the reaction of the other people in the room and realised that maybe she shouldn’t have said that so casually. “It’s ok.” she said quickly, then realised that was stupid “Well no, it’s not ok, _obviously_ , but he didn’t succeed, I got away, and it was years ago and I dealt with it, mostly. I’m ok.”

“Did anyone else try or, or succeed in touching you inappropriately?” Nat asked, knowing she had never, _never_ in her life wanted to hear a negative answer so much.

“No, I got smacked around and stuff by a few families, but no one else tried to touch me like that.”

Nat sucked in a breath, realising as she did so that she  hadn’t started taking them again . She looked across to the other sofa and without a single word she and Clint promised each other that at some point, however long it took, they were going to track down this man and make him  _pay_ . 

** AND START READING HERE AGAIN **

“ _Anyway”_ Daisy said, obviously trying to change the subject “I ran off from the system when I was 16 with a decent amount of stolen cash in the bank account I opened years ago with a fake ID, which I suppose means that was illegal too, and some cash I nicked from the foster home. Made it three states over before I ran out of money. Took a collection of waitressing and similar jobs using another fake ID and took hacking jobs on the darknet using computer cafe computers for extra cash, most of which were also pretty illegal, you may see a pattern here. Found a hacking group I got on with on the darknet and they sent some pretty regular jobs my way. Started travelling around a bit, moving on whenever anyone started suspecting I wasn’t really an adult. Ended up in New York just after my 17th birthday, met up with some hacking buddies from the darknet and got kinda drunk. We started betting each other to do stupider and stupider hacks until one of them, this bored rich kid bet me his computer I couldn’t hack into Stark Industries. I was drunk enough to take the bet and managed it, which was how I ended up with a decent computer. I could take bigger and higher profile hacking jobs after that, made a name for myself on the darknet and off it as a legit programmer under a fake name, earned enough to buy my van. Fell in with a hacker named Miles a few years later, joined Rising Tide with him because we both believed in the freedom of information. Spent a couple of years moving around, chasing any vague lead on who my parents were, and at the same time hacking and releasing information we and the Rising Tide believed the world deserved to know. I’m not proud of it now. Eventually the stuff I was looking into coincided with something Coulson’s new team were looking into and long story short that's how I ended up joining shield. Lots of illegal hacking and fake identities.”

“That’s quite a story.” Laura said “Thanks you for sharing it with us.”

Daisy shrugged “Like I said, it’s not a very nice story.”

“It’s a story about making the best of what you had and surviving.” Laura said “You did what you had to do, and you don’t seem to have hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it along the way.”

“The Rising Tide, me included, hurt plenty of people with the information we leaked. Especially the information from organisations like Shield.”

Across the room Clint laughed, Nat was about to glare at him for it when he said “Daisy, over half the agents shield recruited had dodgy backgrounds. The vast majority of the old shield computer tech department were once hackers. Most of the field agents spent their teens and young adulthood getting into trouble. The kind of people who excel as agents are rarely the kind who excel at normal civilian life.”

“Yeah, just look at Clint.” Nat said with dry amusement.

“Hey!” her partner protested

“You went so stir-crazy when you were given medical leave once you broke your arm in a second place falling off the barn after you tried to fire your bow with your teeth.” Laura pointed out. Nat had almost forgotten about that, she’d had to deliver the news to Maria and it had been the first time Nat had cracked Commander Hill’s ultra-professional image when the woman had gaped at her with a face that said more eloquently than any words _Your partner is barking mad._

Daisy burst out laughing, and looked much lighter for it, and Nat shot both Clint and Laura a grateful smile.

Clint huffed “I was bored!” he whined “And at least I wasn’t the one who broke into medical and changed records to make it look like I’d been declared healthy and mission ready.”

Nat half-laughed half-winced in memory “I think half the helicarrier heard Maria and Coulson shouting at me for that.”

Laura sighed, shaking her head “These two idiots” she told Daisy “are the reason a regulation was brought in where a doctor had to escort every agent out of medical, even visitors.”

Daisy looked from Nat to Clint, eyes wide “And Simmons thinks Bobbi and I are bad!”

“You are, you should go to medical more often instead of stitching yourself up.” Nat said

“But you don’t!” Daisy complained

“Do as I say not as I do.” Nat replied, then froze. “Did I really just say that?”

Laura threw back her head and laughed “Welcome to parenthood Natasha!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: CHRISTMAS!!!


	19. Chapter 19

Daisy woke up too early the next day. They’d stayed up passed 11pm chatting but her body had still woken her up early to go do tai-chi with her mom. Luckily, they’d crossed a time-zone line so it was a little later in the day than it otherwise would have been, but that didn’t mean her body had gotten any more sleep. She rolled out of bed and dressed quickly, shivering in the morning cold and was about to find her laptop and something to do for an hour or two when she heard footsteps sneaking passed her door, accompanied by badly muffled giggles and ‘sssshhhh’ noises. Evidently she wasn’t the only one up silly early on Christmas morning.

She opened her door and followed Lila and Cooper downstairs, although much quieter than either kid had been, experienced feet pressing down lightly against the floorboards to test for creaking before she put her weight on it. Even before shield she’d had years of experience sneaking in and out of unfamiliar homes to do her own thing at night.

Lila and Cooper were sitting on the floor in the living room when she arrived, wearing thick fluffy dressing gowns and slippers and excitedly opening the stockings that had been hung over the fireplace.

“Morning” she said, and both kids jumped a mile. Oops, maybe she should have made some noise when she entered. “Sorry” she added.

Neither kid looked particularly annoyed however “Look what we’ve got!” Cooper said, holding up small green torch. Lila held up her own blue one with a grin. “What’s in yours?” she asked.

“That’s cool” Daisy said with a grin. “I’m too old for a stocking.”

“No you’re not” Cooper said, pointing, and Daisy blinked in surprise to find that one of her socks she hadn’t even been aware was missing (which probably meant either her mama or uncle was behind this) was hanging above the fireplace, now filled with odd corners. Daisy felt a surprised smile spread across her face, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a Christmas stocking. It had certainly been a long time before she’d run off from the system. She unhooked it carefully, feeling a little like this was her second childhood she was holding, and sat down next to Lila and Coop to open it. All three of their stockings turned out to be the same, with slight variations in colour. They all had a torch, a pencil, a small packet of sweets and an orange. Lila and Coop instantly opened the sweets, and Daisy wondered for a moment whether whichever parent had filled these had _quite_ thought this through. The kids only ate a few each though before they turned their attention to the packages under the tree in the corner.

“We’re allowed to open one before breakfast” Cooper informed Daisy.

“But only one.” Lila said, with great seriousness “So we have to choose carefully.”

“And anything near the back is from close family and has to wait for family before we can open it, so it has to be from near the front” Cooper added, walking around the tree and examining the packages with a keen eye, his sister doing something similar. Lila decided first.

“This one” she said, pulling out a green wrapped package and poking it to try and work out what it was, before sitting down to matter of factly pull it open. It turned out to be a box of plastic train track bits, without any trains. Daisy thought for a moment that it was a bit of a naff gift but Lila’s face lit up, closely followed by Cooper’s.

“Oh, I’ve probably got one too if you’ve got one. Where’s your wrapping paper?”

Lila pointed at the discarded green paper, and Cooper grabbed it and started searching for another similar package while Lila opened the box, pulling out the pieces with satisfaction, hunting through until she held up a turnstile with satisfaction “Got it!” she announced, just as Cooper located his package.

Then Daisy suddenly found herself faced with two pleading faces “Can we go to the barn? We have to have adult supervision.” Lila asked “Please, please, please??”

“Please?” Cooper added, then “You can pick your present first.”

“We’ll help you!” Lila offered, practically bouncing with excitement.

Daisy didn’t even think about resisting in the face of their excitement, “Which do you think looks good?” she asked.

“This one is wrapped in newspaper and post-it-notes.” Cooper observed, with 7 year old curiosity in his voice.

“That one then” Daisy said, not even bothering to pretend she wasn’t curious as well. Cooper grabbed it and brought it over carefully. It was indeed wrapped in newspaper and had no less than three post it notes stuck on top.

The first one read ‘Built this a while back, it’s not fully tested but I’m sure you can work out the kinks.’

The second one said in distinctly neater writing ‘I’m sorry about the newspaper, I didn’t realise what he was doing and there was no time to re-wrap it. Merry Christmas. Pepper.’

The third read, a little alarmingly ‘Knowing you, you’ll be up early, and knowing Lila and Coop, they’ll have you picking out one present and then pick the most interesting looking out for you. Tony asked me to give this to you, but he didn’t say what it is. Please make sure Lila and Coop sit well back, it wouldn’t be the first present from Tony to explode a little. Merry Christmas Pauchok.’

“Uh, you’re auntie Nat says to stand back because it might explode” Daisy said.

“Cool!” Cooper proclaimed, but he did retreat several steps and pull his sister with him.

Daisy reached out to feel any vibrations from the package and decided that whatever it was, it was stable at least, and carefully pulled open the newspaper. It turned out to be a laptop, a SI laptop. An SI laptop that Daisy knew wasn’t on any catalogue or coming-soon news. Stuck on top was another note in messy handwriting that read ‘This is mostly hardware, you’ll need to put your own software on, but you were probably going to do that anyway. I would.’

Daisy wasn’t sure what she was feeling more. Touched that Tony Stark, who she’d only met yesterday, had given her a Christmas present or over-excited because this was a _Stark designed laptop!_ She felt like a little kid on Christmas morning again! Rather like Lila and Cooper actually, although they currently looked a little disappointed about the lack of explosions.

“Is that a computer” Lila asked, with a tone of deep disappointment.

“Yeah” Daisy said, her own tone betraying her contrasting excitement. She pushed the lip up and the screen instantly switched on, booting up with a speed Daisy hadn’t come across before, even with her shield laptop, which was pretty good. It popped up with a load of setup options, and computer information, and Daisy’s eyes immediately zoomed in on the line ‘Powercell – 100% functioning’. Which meant she _didn’t need to charge it_!!

“Can we go to the barn now? Pleeeeaaaaseee” Lila asked, disappointment about the lack of explosions buried under returning excitement.

“Oh, sure, just let me get my laptop from upstairs so I can set this up. Oh, and is there something I can leave your parents a note with?”

“There’s a notepad by the door.” Cooper said.

“Ok, back in a minute.”

A minute later she was back downstairs with her shield laptop. She quickly scribbled a note on the pad by the door, telling her aunt and uncle she’d taken Lila and Cooper out to the barn, and shoved her feet into shoes. She made sure the kids were appropriately bundled up (they were still in pyjamas but at least they now had jumpers, coats, scarves, hats and gloves as well, and another layer of socks and warm boots) and located a house key before she let the two hyper kids drag her out to the barn.

The layers turned out to be a good idea, because the air was bitingly cold. The sky was a sharp, icy blue that you only really get in the very early morning and the snow crunched under their shoes. It was beautiful, but it was also too cold to really appreciate it so Daisy let Cooper drag her along to the barn without stopping. Cooper produced the key to the lock on the barn door and worked the lock open, and they all hurried inside. It was still cold but significantly warmer inside the barn, and Daisy let her tight muscles relax as she looked around.

Coils of rope, an old archery target and an assortment of sticks and poles were leaned against the wall by the entrance, and a tractor sat next to it, surrounded by a collection of farm tools. Lila and Cooper dragged her right past it though, heading for the back of the barn where a swath of space had clearly been handed over to the kids. Two large beanbags had been pushed against the wall, and several plastic tubs were stacked empty next to them, the contents of the tubs spread out on the floor in one of the most impressive toy train tracks Daisy had ever seen.

This had clearly been their project for some time, there were at least three boxes worth of track put together on the floor, with at least 20 trains scattered over it, not to mention the several wooden houses and bridges that they’d clearly made themselves, along with the lego and knex structures dotted around the place. Lila made her careful way into the middle of the structure and placed the turn-stile she’d pulled out of the box earlier in the middle, clicking it securely into place with a satisfaction that told Daisy they’d been missing the piece for some time. Then Daisy got a jumbled introduction to the whole project and half a dozen stories from its creation thus far, both kids talking at once until Daisy wasn’t sure where one story began and another ended. Finally, they ran out of the most important things to say and turned to emptying their boxes of new tracks into one of the tubs and starting work on an extension, dismantling and rebuilding one side of the track as they did so.

Daisy watched them play for a few minutes, grinning at their enthusiasm, before she settled into one of the beanbags and booted up both the laptops so she could copy her account, settings and programming onto the new computer before she got to work on finding its limits and stretching them.

\---------------------

Clint came to get them an hour later, absorbing both flying hugs from his kids without spilling the mug of coffee in his hand.

“Merry Christmas” he said, still sounding sleepy “mommy’s cooking waffles if you can tear yourself away from the trains?”

Lila and Cooper could tear themselves away, so Daisy (slightly sadly) powered down the laptops (Tony’s creation was incredible! It was faster than anything Daisy had ever used before, had more storage and processing power and it’s _internet use!!!_ And then there was the fact that it powered itself, and the high-end mini-camera at the top of the screen and the fingerprint sensitive keys that meant Daisy could potentially set the laptop up so only she could use it. It was perfect for both spy and hacker work and Daisy thought she might be in love with a piece of technology.) and joined her uncle and cousins on the freezing jog back to the farmhouse.

She didn’t realise just how cold she’d been until she got into the house and the warmth from the heating rolled over her. She almost moaned, feeling like she’d just walked into a hot bath, and she could feel half the muscles in her body loosening. Lila and Cooper just kicked of their shoes and hung coats on pegs before running into the kitchen, calling out delighted ‘Merry Christmases’. They had been climbing all round the room rearranging and adding to their track and were probably fine. Daisy however blew on her fingers as she followed her uncle and cousins at a slower pace.

Her mama was leaning against the counter in the kitchen sipping coffee while aunt Laura was indeed making waffles at another counter, Lila and Cooper already running around putting plates and an assortment of toppings on the table. Her mama put her coffee down when she spotted her and came over to give her a hug.

“Merry Christmas Pauchok” she said warmly, then “You’re freezing! What have you been _doing_?!”

“Sitting programming in the barn” she said, and then more excitedly “Tony gave me a laptop he built himself! It’s got its own power source!”

“It didn’t explode” Cooper said from where he was eyeing the progress of the waffle machine.

“We can make things explode later” Clint promised, reaching over to ruffle his hair.

“Not indoors please” Laura said, shooing both her son and husband out of the way so she could take the first waffles out and put in more mix. There was a confused mix of movements as Clint settled the kids at the table with the first of the waffles, and somewhere in it Daisy found herself with a mug of hot tea pushed into her hands, her mama giving her a _drink it_ look. Daisy, who knew by this point what looks not to argue with, raised the mug to her mouth and drank, watching her uncle try to limit the amount of syrup Cooper and Lila added to their waffles.

It was a chaotic, laughter filled meal, and it reminded Daisy a little of breakfasts at the Cocoon, everyone getting in each other’s way around the kitchen and someone refusing to let anyone else cook (Daisy had only once managed to get Ben to let her take over his cooking and she’d enlisted the help of Julie and her puppy-dog eyes just to see if it would work.). She had a feeling Laura and Ben would either get on very, very well, or spectacularly badly. Everyone except Laura helped clear and clean up, putting away all the sauces and washing, drying and putting everything away, the kids bouncing with impatience. Main present opening time, Daisy gathered, was usually after breakfast.

Eventually they’d cleaned up everything from the meal and Clint pretended resist as Cooper tried to drag him into the living room. Nat, laughing, pretended to try to escape upstairs while Laura hid under the table, eyes dancing with humour.

Lila pulled chairs out of the way and grabbed her mommy’s hand “Grab auntie Nat!” she called to Daisy, who was evidently categorised as one of the kids in this impromptu game.

Laughing herself, Daisy intercepted her mama at the stairs and grabbed her hand, pretending to drag her after Lila and Laura, the sound of her cousin’s giggles filling the entire house. Her mama let her pull her into the living room (Daisy was perfectly aware that she wouldn’t have been able to make the black widow move an inch without _significantly_ more effort and injury if she wasn’t letting her) and she followed Lila and Coop’s examples and deposited the ‘rebel’ on the couch before rejoining the adult world and sitting down between Clint and her mama.

The kids bounced around, more energetic than Daisy had seen anyone in a long time, filling the room with infectious energy as Clint pulled out a camera and Laura pulled out an eye-mask of all things. Her mama explained briefly as Clint fiddled with the camera settings and pointed it at his hyper kids.

Present opening at the Barton’s apparently came with a tradition passed down from Laura’s parents. The youngest child (or person before Cooper or Lila were born) in the family put on a blindfold of some sort and picked a present from under the tree, the present and the blindfold would be given to the person the present turned out to belong to, who would open it, then put on the blindfold and pick the next present. The last person to get a present had to put the blindfold on, get spun around, and then had to find their way around the house to pick up three things the others decided on.

“One year Laura made Clint find a single odd sock in the laundry, and every time he came back with the wrong sock she clothes-pegged the sock onto him. We gave Coulson a copy of the photo, he probably still has it somewhere.”

Knowing her dad, he probably did.

“Ready!” Clint said finally, satisfied with the camera, and Lila put the eyemask on and let herself be spun in a circle twice, giggling loudly.

“No peeking!” Cooper said as his little sister made her unsteady way towards the tree and the packages beneath it, hands stretched out in front of her.

“I’m not!” Lila retorted, her fingers finding pine needles and dropping down towards the packages. She picked up the first one she touched and pushed the mask up and examined the attached red tag with a picture of a bow on it. “It’s daddy’s!”

Daisy recognised the parcel, it was one of hers. She’d wrapped most of her presents in a rush with her mama the night before they left, and the tag had been added by her mama. The package contained a spin-off book from the Robin Hood stories and was called ‘The adventures of Maid Marion’, and a note promising a back massage every time Clint dropped by the Playground.

Clint managed to look both mock-insulted and happy with the book “I haven’t read this one yet” he said.

“He has a collection of versions of Robin Hood.” Nat explained, her grin teasing.

“Oooh, I’ll hold you to this” Clint said, holding up the note.

Laura leaned over a little to read it and raised a confused eyebrow “Back massages?”

“Daisy gives the _best_ back massages” Clint said gleefully (Daisy had given him one when he’d dropped by a couple of weeks after they first broke into the Playground, he’d been still sore from a mission and he’d walked in when she’d been massaging the muscles around Bobbi’s knee for her. He’d shamelessly pouted his way into two more massages since then.).

“I can vibrate the muscles with my power” Daisy explained.

Laura smiled “I’ll have to steal some of Clint’s massages when you visit then. Pregnant wife right.” she said, directing the last comment teasingly at her mock-pouting husband.

Daisy told herself firmly that she was _not_ going to get chocked up about Aunt Laura saying ‘when’ not ‘if’. Even if she _had_ said it so casually and unthinkingly.   


“Pick a present daddy!” Lila said, clearly considering the pause to talk about the gift too long a pause, and Clint laughed and put on the mask and let himself be spun around and the present opening continued.

Half an hour later Daisy watched Cooper get given the last present with amusement. The method of present handing-out may have been unusual but it was certainly amusing. She suspected that neither the mask nor the spinning had any effect on the two Avengers, but both had played along, pretending to wobble dangerously across the room in the wrong directions and feeling the air in front of them like they were completely lost. She was pretty sure Laura had not been pretending when she’d taken one step and tripped over her own feet. Clint had lunged forward with Avenger reflexes and caught her before she hit the floor and they’d all laughed about it (in fairness, Cooper had spun her _very_ enthusiastically). Lila and Cooper had seriously hit and miss walking skills after the spinning, but always had an adult ready to catch them. Daisy herself had explained (after managing easily to find the tree twice) apologetically that if she concentrated she could feel the specific vibrations the Christmas tree gave and walk towards that. Then she’d groaned aloud as she caught the look on her mama’s face and realised she’d just doomed herself to hours of blindfold training.

Still, the process had been unquestionably fun, and Daisy couldn’t help feeling touched (even more than last year, which was impressive) by every single present she’d received. The first things she’d gotten, an oddly heavy box from her caterpillars and delivered by Cooper, had turned out to contain strange bands with batteries and magnets set into them, and a note that explained that one set of bands went on her and the other on someone else so she could switch on the magnets and take a rider while quake-jumping. She’d instantly thought of dozens of ways in which it could be useful (taking Arin when he was cleared for the strike team to high ground, having someone who could shoot while she ‘flew’...) and grinned like a madwoman. Her second thing had been just an envelope which contained a photo of a box full of test-tubes and odd devices and a note reading ‘They’re not going to know what hit them! Merry Christmas Daisy.’ signed Leo and Simmons with ‘Ps, we’re leaving the box under your bed, some of the things shouldn’t go in a plane’ scribbled underneath. Her next gift turned out to be from her mom and dad, and was a thick book that Daisy opened to find was a photo album. The first photo showed ‘Skye’ laughing with FitzSimmons, sitting on the ramp of the BUS after the mission when they’d blown a hole in it. She put it away to look through later, having a strong suspicion she’d end up happy crying at least a little looking through it.

She had almost cried right then when she’d opened her mama’s gift to find a delicate looking silver necklace with the word ‘Always’ on it. Her mind had instantly flown back to her mama telling her she would always love her and her throat had gone that thick and tight feeling she always got when she was emotional.

“It’s not as delicate as it looks.” her mama had said as she put it on, “And there’s a panic button hidden in the clasp obviously.” and Daisy had laughed so hard her sides ached.

Daisy had been pretty sure what the case-shaped present Clint handed her with a smirk was before she opened it, but still laughed to find a metal bow split into several pieces in the case.

“May’s going to kill you in your sleep Clint” her mama had observed, but Daisy liked the gift. It would probably improve her aim and it would be fun to practice with. Although, she might try to ease her mom into the idea slowly. Very slowly. After she’d practised for a few hours already in the Cocoon.

Daisy had also enjoyed watching the others open her gifts. Her mama had given her a grin that could only be described as gleefully evil when she’d opened hers (a collection of USB flash-drives she’d put automatically uploading hacks, viruses and more on). Laura had given her an appreciative smile for the pack of ‘fancy teas’ and the book (Daisy hadn’t really known what to get her aunt so she’d played it safe), and both Lila and Cooper were delighted with the platform video games she’d given them (she’d edited the programming a bit, unlocking extra features and creating a mode to turn the whole lot upside down that may or may not make the game impossible, but she’d tell them about those when they’d finished playing them normally).

The present opening was followed by a giggling Cooper putting on the blindfold again and getting spun around a good dozen times before they followed him round the house, offering helpful and unhelpful suggestions in equal measure, as he tried to locate a tennis ball, Clint’s _Robin Hood Rules_ coffee mug and a yellow towel. Daisy couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed so hard for so long. If she ever had.

After this, Laura sent the kids to put on daytime clothes and then kicked them all out of the house for what Clint told her was an annual snowball fight/capture the flag contest Laura had introduced a decade ago to keep everyone else out from underfoot while she cooked to her hearts content.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All's fair in love and snowball fights

“So, how are we splitting up the teams?” Clint asked when they were all assembled outside, bundled up in hats and scarves and mittens. They’d walked a good way away from the farmhouse to a hilly area scattered with clumps of trees and bushes. It looked like the ideal place for a snowball fight, the trees and hills providing enough cover for sneak attacks and shelter, with areas where the ground dipped and rose, perfect for building snow-forts. Best of all, it was in the middle of no-where and the snow was thick and untouched, providing not only plenty of ammunition but also soft landings. 

“Girls against boys?” her mama suggested, grinning.

“No way,” Clint said instantly “you’d have two adults and more people. Parents vs kids?”

“Not fair! You two are really good!” Cooper protested, just as Daisy complained “I’m not a kid!”

“Romanoff's against Bartons?” her mama tried “We have two agents but you have more players.”

No-one instantly shot it down, but “We get a half hour head start and the high ground with the triangle of trees.” Clint said.

“You can have the head start and the high ground, but not that bit of high ground.” her mama bargained. 

“Nope, we need the high ground with the trees, right guys? Twenty minutes head start and the high ground with the trees.”

“Deal” Daisy said, then covered it with “Or we’ll never get started.”

Her mama groaned, but nodded “Fine. Normal rules?”

Clint nodded, and started listing them off “Both teams get twenty minutes to build a snow-fort and put their flag somewhere visible, we get an extra twenty. I’ll blow my whistle when the game starts. The aim is to capture the enemy’s flag and get back to your own fort before the enemy manages the same. Your flag has to be at least a metre away from your fort. There are no prisoners or line of safety, just snow attacks. No head shots at the kids, Daisy you don’t count. One long whistle means you’ve got the enemy’s flag back to your fort and the game is over. Two short blasts on a whistle means stop instantly and come to the sound of the whistle. Everyone clear?”

They were, so Clint took Lila and Coop off behind one of the hills with the red flag, leaving them with the blue one. He turned and waved just before he vanished out of sight yelling “Good luck, you’ll need it! I’m the king of snowball fights!”

Her mama waited until they were out of sight turned to her with a frown “He’s right, we’ll need luck, the high ground with the trees is perfect for forts because you can build walls between the trees, and there’s barely any cover on the run up the hill.”

Daisy let a grin spread across her face “Did I ever tell you the first thing I did intentionally with my power was cause an avalanche?” she said faux-innocent. 

Her mama blinked, then a smug smirk spread over her face “Clint didn’t say anything about powers in the rules.”

“Which obviously means it’s allowed” Daisy finished, knowing her answering smirk was just a _touch_ too evil to be innocent. 

They spent the next twenty minutes hashing out a plan of attack, and deciding on a place to build their own fort (well, her mama picked that bit, given she knew the area.). Because they had a head-start, and a good place to build their fort, it was possible that the Barton’s would go on a rapid offensive, hoping to catch them before they were ready. But they also had a strong defensive position, so they might sit tight and play the long game. Her mama thought that, given Clint’s insistence on the position, he intended to play the long game, drawing them into attacking and then sending one of the kids sneaking round to get their flag when they were fully occupied. They weren’t sure, but they’d made their plan A (her mama said that plans B and C were important even if it was just a snowball fight, but plan D could be omitted) based on this guess. The plan was to make Clint think they were playing into his hands. They wouldn’t make it obvious of course, because that would instantly give away that they had something up their sleeves. Daisy would attack from the front, and her mama would sneak around the back, but Clint would almost certainly spot her, and it would seem like they were playing into his hands. Right up until Daisy quaked their fort walls, after which it was a straightforward plan of grab the flag and run. 

When the twenty minutes were up Daisy followed her mama quickly around a hill to a clump of bushes set halfway up a hill. It wasn’t an ideal location, but it gave them some high ground and something to build walls against, and they made to, putting the flag at the top of the hill and weighing it down with a couple of handfuls of snow. They’d just finished a respectable 4 walls on ‘Fort snowbush’ when two long blasts of Clint’s whistle indicated the start of the game. They abandoned their fort (if plan A went well they wouldn’t need it at all), and headed in the direction of team Barton’s ‘defensive’ position, splitting up halfway there.

Her mama disappeared instantly after they split up, somehow managing to vanish almost instantly despite dark clothes against the sea of white that really ought to crunch under her feet. Daisy followed her uncle and cousin’s footsteps in the snow, sticking to cover where possible and sprinting quickly from cover to cover when not. If she made it look like she didn’t mind being noticed then she would obviously look like the distraction, which would in turn tip Clint off to the fact that a distraction and sneak attack wasn’t actually their play. Or in other words, Daisy was pretending not to be the distraction to make Clint believe she was the distraction and miss that it was actually Nat who was the distraction. Tactics were weird sometimes. 

She made it to the base of the high ground before a sudden bombardment of snowballs came from above, clearly waiting until she was within range. The (surprisingly good but nowhere near perfect) aim told her that Clint had taken the bait and was leaving Lila and Coop to deal with her while he dealt with the (supposedly) bigger threat of her mama. Which, without powers to vibrate their snow fort, would have been a good plan. Daisy was pretty fit, and had a decent aim, but she had nothing on her mama. Unfortunately, Clint had made a tactical mistake when he forgot to ban powers, and they intended to make full use of it. 

She bit her lip to hold her giggles in as she zig-zag ran up the hill, taking several ‘hits’ as she did so, trying to get as close as possible to the fort (they were both sure the Barton’s would have left their flag as close to the fort as possible.) and spot the tell-tale red of their flag. Daisy spotted it seconds before her mama gave a long two-note whistle, the signal. 

Instantly, Daisy reached out with her mind, feeling the vibrations of the snow around her, and narrowing it to the packed snow that made up the walls of the fort. She started vibrating the insides of the walls slowly first, then the outside, then rapidly increased the vibrations until in a sudden rush the entire structure collapsed inwards a a triangular wave of white dust, toppling limbs and shrieks of shock. The volley of snowballs vanished instantly, lost under the attack of their own defensive walls; all that remained of her cousins were a couple of feet and a mitten sticking out from under the massive pile of snow. 

Daisy almost burst out laughing from the sound her cousin’s and uncle made as their fort walls, built carefully high and protective, crashed down on them. They would not remain buried in snow for long however, so Daisy sprinted the rest of the way up the hill, no longer beaten back by impressively well aimed snowballs. She scrambled up the tree Clint had tied it to (the flag had been hanging above their fort, satisfying the distance requirement while still taking advantage of the defensible high ground) and yanked at the knots, pulling her mittens off with her teeth to pull the knots apart and then dropping to the ground, mittens still held in her teeth as she rolled to absorb the force of the fall. She sprang to her feet just as Clint got free enough to howl.

“Thats cheating!!!”

“Wrrrifarr wh whgh whhwolls” (wasn’t in the rules) Daisy said, still with mittens in her mouth, sprinting down the hill. She heard her mama shout “You didn’t say it wasn’t allowed birdbrain” from the other side of the hill but didn’t stop running. Already hastily formed snowballs were hitting her in the back, and Daisy doubted it would be long before Clint worked the rest of his way free and came running after her, and she wanted a decent head start before then. They hadn’t won until they got the flag back to their own fort, and her mama was too far away to help her with the other Avenger. 

She made it fifteen metres from the base of the hill before she heard the sound of rapid pursuit behind her. She tried to run faster, but her feet kept sinking into the soft snow as she scrambled over the uneven ground, and it was difficult to get as much air in as normal around her laughter. Clint yelling “That’s a frivolous personal use of superpowers!!! With great power comes great responsibility!!!” behind her wasn’t helping. She was only saved by the fact that Clint was wasting just as much breath shouting as she was laughing and they were both struggling to run over the terrain. Even so, Clint was gaining on her, more used to the terrain and snowball fights in general than Daisy was.

Luckily, they had been slow enough that her mama had somehow managed to catch up, nailing her unofficial brother right in the face with a snowball just as he almost reached her.

“Run Pauchok!” she yelled, her voice dim with breathlessness as she sped to intercept Clint. Daisy heard someone hit the snow and an “oomph” behind her but she didn’t stop to see which of them it was, especially as a second muted thump behind her indicated the other one landing in the snow too and clear sounds of snow-wrestling. She didn’t stop until she reached their fort and she tumbled inside it, waving the flag above her head even as she doubled over laughing and wheezing, not having nearly enough breath left to even _think_ about blowing her whistle. 

It was almost a minute before Clint came sprinting over, covered head to toe in snow but narrowly ahead of a (also very snowy) Natasha. They both slowed to a halt when they saw Daisy waving the flag, and her mama let out a (very un-black-widow like but also very Nat like) whoop and blew hers, the single long note signalling to Lila and Cooper (whose size made it both harder to get free of the massive pile of snow their fort had become and catch up) that the game was over.

Daisy left the fort and half rolled down the hill to her mama and aunt, her sides and face aching with laughter. Her mama gave her a wide grin as she arrived, even as she took off her jacket and shook it out, and stuck fingers down her neck trying to extract a quantity of snow that Clint had clearly stuffed there.

Clint shook his head in defeat, scowling without any heat “That was sooo not fair.” he complained.

“Nothing in the rules banning it” her mama said smugly, grinning at her partner. 

“Want another handful of snow down your neck?” Clint grouched, but he too was laughing. 

“That’s such a kind offer, but I really can’t accept it” her mama laughed, scrambling away from Clint as he scooped up a handful of snow and advanced with laughter-weakened menace. 

“I thought Russians weren’t afraid of the cold”

“I thought you were the king of snowball fights!”

That did it, and Clint jumped physically forward, tacking Nat into the snow and they rolled around, shoving handfuls of snow in each others faces and laughing and laughing and laughing.

By the time her cousins arrived, Cooper holding the mittens Daisy had completely forgotten about (she must have dropped them from her mouth while running from Clint). The kids grumbled good-naturedly about the trick but Clint had already forgiven them and it was dropped quickly.

They played again, powers now firmly banned, and Daisy and her mama did their best, but the advantage of the perfect fort position proved too much to overcome and while her mama did eventually manage to get the flag off Lila and Cooper, Clint managed to get the other one off Daisy faster and made it back to their fort first. Despite this, the fight lasted three times the length of the first, which her mama made sure to point out smugly. They played again, ‘kids’ against parents on the condition that the ‘kids’ not only got the fort but also powers were re-allowed. They won narrowly. Her mama and uncle didn’t bother repairing the other fort, and instead spent the time sneaking up on them so they could attack moments after Daisy blew the whistle to start. They nailed not them but the trees round them with snowballs, dumping the accumulated snow in the tree on top of them in a sneak attack. In the moments before they recovered, Clint, moving impressively quickly, managed to retrieve the flag. Daisy, on a sudden wild idea, yelled for her cousins to slow them down and quake-jumped from the fort, vibrating the air harder than she ever had before. It wasn’t what she would call a  _controlled_ flight, but it certainly was fast, pushing herself through the air like a rocket with vibrations. She almost fell out of the air half a dozen times avoiding trees and more crashed than landed above the other fort, but she grabbed their flag, and booked it back. Her cousins had taken the order to slow them down with enthusiasm, and had had limited success, their impressive aim nailing their dad and auntie Nat’s backs and necks and knocking them off balance or pushing them to pause to fling a few back. Daisy made it back to their fort and blew her whistle a second before Clint blew his, and she’d collapsed on the remains of their fort (she’d gone through the wall getting back) and panted for air. 

Her mama had huffed that ‘flying’ would never have worked if she had a gun or Clint his bow, which was true, but they hadn’t and the ‘kids’ had still won. They trooped, laughing and teasing each other, back to the farm house, stomping their feet outside and trying to shake off as much snow as they could before they went it. The smell that reached them as soon as the door opened made Daisy suddenly aware that she was starving, and she followed her cousins upstairs to change (they were all soaked through, and would freeze if they sat around in snow-soaked clothes) with just ask much enthusiasm. 

Laura Barton, Daisy decided over Christmas dinner, could give Ben a run for his money, not just in cooking skill but also in quantity – and in encouraging people to eat! There was every ‘Christmas dinner’ food Daisy had ever had spread across the table, and several she hadn’t. She asked about one (a bowl of dry cocoa-pops) but got a shake of the head from all three other adults and a ‘we don’t talk about the cocoa-pops’ and decided not to ask about the other surprising dishes. Whichever dish it was however, it all smelled amazing, and Laura encouraged them all to eat with just as much effectiveness if significantly different approach as the inhuman (Ben had these soulful eyes that he directed at you until you felt like you were insulting his food by not eating it, while Laura kept adding things to your plate and saying you were hardly eating anything). Even while it was going Daisy knew the meal was going to become a treasured memory, a rosy-tinted one of her aunt’s cooking; the bantering over the highlights of the snowball match; debating what their favourite gifts were; Clint pretending to beg for mercy when his wife added more food to his plate; her mama sliding under the table because she was ‘dying of food’ only to emerge to find Laura adding more food to her plate; her aunts approving smile as Daisy ate as only an inhuman (or Captain America or Thor) could until even she felt like another bite would make her explode. They pulled Christmas crackers and put on the flimsy crowns inside and sat around talking and laughing even after everyone had finished eating, until the kids begged to go and play and the adults except for Laura worked together (waddling around a little with waaaay too full stomachs) to tub up and put away the extra food and clear the table, leaving the washing up to do when they felt a little less bloated. 

“Every year I say I’m not going to do this next year” her mama said, groaning a little with one hand over her stomach “And then every year Laura cooks food like that and I do it anyway.”

“C’mon, lets go video call the Avengers, we can sit still and not move for an hour at least.” her uncle said.

“I’m gonna call the Cocoon” Daisy said “I said I’d call after lunch.” 

She waved goodbye to the two Avengers and made her way upstairs, settling on the bed, making sure none of the window was visible from the camera and calling Ben. She chatted with him for a couple of minutes, catching up with what was happening at the Cocoon, before the quiet conversation was interrupted by an inhuman cannonball by the name of Julie, who was more hyper than Daisy had ever seen the kid. 

“She managed to sneak up to the Playground and steal all the candy canes off their tree without getting noticed.” Ben explained, over Julie’s thousand-mile-an-hour description of all her Christmas presents (Daisy did manage to gather that she loved the bike she, Ben and Andy had gotten her, but not much else).

“How many did she eat?” Daisy said, feeling a little guiltily grateful that she didn’t directly have to deal with the sugar-high kid.

“We don’t know, but she only had three left when we caught her.”

Daisy winced in reply and gave Ben a part-sympathetic part-pitying look before she turned her full attention to her niece, listening attentively to a long description of her day and the toys she’d been given and how much fun it all was. By the time Julie finally paused, Daisy was beyond confused with the garbled overload of information and just settled on “That sounds nice.”

Half an hour later, Andy and the remaining caterpillars having rescued her from Julie so that they could chat too, Daisy called off to call the Playground, spending another half hour chatting with her mom, dad, FitzSimmons and Mack (Hunter had dragged Bobbi off somewhere for an ‘actual holiday without shooting at anyone’). She laughed with FitzSimmons about the success of their prank present on Coulson (With a ‘little’ tinkering with a fairy wand they had managed to make it magnetise itself to Coulson’s robotic hand. Simmons had lobbed a little packet of pink glitter at his head with surprising accuracy, with the result that May had managed to snap an excellent photo of the director with pink sparkly hair and shoulders waving a fairy wand desperately to get it unstuck from his hand) and then laughed even harder when Jemma sent her a couple of the photos, which she quickly saved to show her mama and Clint. Coulson took the laughter in good humour, merely smiling his good-natured grin and pointing out that they weren’t the only ones who could prank. She also heard about the stolen candy canes from Mack, who adored them and had been eyeing them since the tree was decorated, and they all held a (mildly giggly) minute of silence to give proper respect for the unfortunate casualties of the ‘dastardly raid’. 

After a while FitzSimmons and Mack wandered off to call their own families, and Daisy told her mom and dad about what Lila had asked her mama last night, and how strange it still felt to be in a foster family that wasn’t actually a foster family with a mama that was actually hers. 

“They’re your real family Daisy, Clint's as good as family to your mama.” her mom pointed out.

“And we’re yours too.” her dad added, a hint of possessiveness in his voice.

“I know, Mayson remember? Too late to get rid of me now” she joked.

“Good” her mom said “Too late for you too run too.”

Daisy gave a small smile at that “I know” she repeated, and she did know. All three of them had known what taking Mayson as a family name had meant, not just to Daisy but to her parents too. Daisy had gone by various names in her life, not just because she didn’t like Mary Sue Poots but also because names meant something. Names meant something which was why she’d refused to take the name of the father who tried to kill her. Names meant something which was why she’d refused to just make up a family name for convenience. Names meant something, and Mayson, Mayson meant she was staying, and Mayson meant she trusted them to be there for her to stay with. Mayson meant permanence.

“In other news” Daisy said, before the conversation could get too mushy “I buried hawkeye in his own snow fort earlier.”

\---------------

When Daisy came downstairs, she saw her mama and uncle were still chatting to their team over their own videocall. She was about to steer towards the kitchen to find something else to do when she saw Clint wave her over, a mischievous look on his face. Wondering what she was about to get into, she went over, approaching from the back of her mama’s laptop so the camera couldn’t see her. She raised an eyebrow at her uncle in question, but he just gestured for her to listen.

“...been working on it for 6 months, I couldn’t hack it 2 months ago but he kept saying it wasn’t ready yet, finally let me take the code yesterday.” Daisy recognised Tony’s voice, and her ears pricked up at the word ‘hack’.

“Doesn’t your ex-hacker celebrate Christmas?” her mama asked, voice amused. Daisy wondered how long Tony had been going on about this. 

“He doesn’t celebrate it apparently, refused to even take time off.” Agent Hill’s voice said through the computer. “He’s just as bad as Stark about holidays.”

“Hey! I’m not that bad! I’m taking Christmas off! Peppers still won’t come out of her office!”

“Thats because Bruce threatened to sedate you if you went back in the lab before boxing day.” Steve chimed in.

“He didn’t threaten to sedate Pep!” Tony complained. 

“I’m not insane enough to try, and she wasn’t in her office until 5.30am last night.” 

“Nor was I”

“You were in your lab though” her mama said, amusement dripping from her voice. 

“Speaking of labs, what were you saying about that security system?” Clint chipped in.

“Oh, yes, Richard finally declared it finished last night, and its all up and running now. Beautiful coding, completely unhackable, skyenet couldn’t hack it! And it meshes perfectly with JARVIS!” 

For a moment, Clint’s eyes flashed to hers when Tony said ‘skyenet’ but Daisy didn’t need the hint, she turned pleading eyes to her mama. Her mama didn’t react to her puppy-dog eyes (which Daisy knew were very effective, every system kid learned early to look cute, you tended to get treated that little bit nicer if you did) at all, but she did ask “How do you know she couldn’t hack it?”

“She?” Tony said. 

“Skyenet” her mama replied

“Skyenet could be a guy” 

Her mama snorted “No way is the genius behind making JARVIS sing ‘I know a song that will get on your nerves’ whenever you brought a girl round male. So, what makes you so sure she can’t hack it?”

“It’s unhackable” Tony said, condescension dripping from his voice

Her mama shrugged “I’ll believe that when I see it.”

Which, Daisy thought, was about as close to open permission as she was likely to get. She felt a grin spreading across her face as she backed out of the room, heading upstairs to get the new laptop that was  _perfect_ for hacking. She wasn’t going to believe it was unhackable until she saw it either. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one more chapter left :-(


	21. Chapter 21

Christmas day videochats with the rest of her team had been a tradition since the Avengers had formed three years ago. Every year she and Clint had left for the farm, without telling the rest of their team where they were going, but every year they had also videochatted at some point in the afternoon. The first had been called ‘team bonding’ by Tony (sarcastically) and Steve (genuinely) but they’d all enjoyed it and it had not only happened again but lengthened significantly. They had been chatting for well over an hour with their team-mates and extended family when Daisy came down from chatting with her own team. Her daughter had the relaxed fond look on her face she always had when she’d been spending time with one of her parents (Nat had first seen the look on her face when it was her she’d been spending time with a week after she’d run off and returned. She’d almost dropped her coffee in surprise), now barely edged with surprise that they still wanted her around. Taking both Romanoff and Mayson as her own names seemed to be giving Daisy deeper confidence and security. 

She tugged her attention back to the videochat as Tony kept rambling on about his wonderful new digital security system one of his workers (one of the ones who’d hacked him and he’d employed) had designed. A worker who apparently didn’t take a holiday. She said as much. She watched her Pauchok start listening in with amusement. Daisy really did love hacking. Trust her to have a daughter whose favourite activity was illegal!

The conversation was quickly devolving into a bickering match (again) when Clint asked “Speaking of labs, what were you saying about that security system?”

Nat, if she hadn’t been on camera, would have narrowed her eyes in suspicion at her partner. Clint had been basicly spacing out for over ten minutes while Tony went on about his latest projects that he didn’t get to tell them about yesterday (Nat was pretty sure that the first time either she or Clint stopped by the tower for longer than a few hours Tony was going to make them test at least 5 of them). So why did he want to know now?

“Oh, yes, Richard finally declared it finished last night, and its all up and running now. Beautiful coding, completely unhackable, skyenet couldn’t hack it! And it meshes perfectly with JARVIS!” 

As soon as her teammate said skyenet Clint’s eyes lit up with glee. Nat resisted the urge to let her lips twitch, Clint was such an annoying sibling sometimes. At least this time it wasn’t her he was trying to wind up. She let her eyes glance up naturally (no need to give anything away) to see Daisy giving her puppy dog eyes (which she knew didn’t work on Nat. Even Lila’s puppy dog eyes didn’t work on her). It took a moment for her to realise that her daughter was asking for  _permission_ ! To hack something! Since when did Daisy ask for permission to hack stuff? Since when did Daisy ask for permission from her? Although Tony was her teammate. 

“How do you know she couldn’t hack it?” she replied distractedly, trying to decide if this meant she should pretend to be a responsible parent or let her daughter and brother (and herself to be honest) have their fun.

“She?” Tony asked. Dammit. She shouldn’t have gotten distracted. 

“Skyenet” she said, not revealing she’d said anything she hadn’t meant to. 

“Skyenet could be a guy” 

Nat snorted, purposefully mocking. “No way is the genius behind making JARVIS sing ‘I know a song that will get on your nerves’ whenever you brought a girl round male. So, what makes you so sure she can’t hack it?” she repeated

“It’s unhackable” Tony said, condescension dripping from his voice

Tony Stark could be incredibly annoyingly arrogant sometimes. “I’ll believe that when I see it.” she said, making her decision and giving her daughter permission. Daisy’s whole face lit up and she backed out of the room, no doubt going to get started. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a grin spread over Clint’s face. She reached over and tapped on his leg hastily, making sure it couldn’t be seen from the camera. 

“You’ll give it away” she tapped. 

Clint instantly toned down the grin, and gave some inane response to Tony.

“This is going to be good.” he tapped back. 

“She might not get in” Nat reminded him, but she rather hoped Daisy did, it would be hilarious. May and Coulson could be the responsible parents. 

An hour later they’d finally wrapped up the annual Christmas videochat, and Nat put her tablet away. Her stomach now felt a little less like she’d swallowed a soccer ball, so she headed upstairs to see how Daisy was doing with her hack. Lila and Cooper were still thoroughly occupied playing with their new toys, and would likely remain that way until they caught sight of an adult, at which point they would demand attention and an extra player in whatever they were doing, so she made sure she crept past like she was on an op. 

Daisy was sitting on her bed in the guest room, her new Stark laptop on her knees and her fingers blurring over the keyboard. She didn’t even glance up as Nat leaned on the doorway watching her. It was moments like this that it caught Nat all over again how much had changed in a few short months. How much had changed in the single, mind-blowing moment when Daisy had walked into Coulson’s office to report and Nat’s entire world had rocked on it’s axis. She’d missed out on so, so much in her daughters life, and the loss of it could still take her breath away, but she was more grateful than she could ever put into words to have a second chance. Her Pauchok was alive. Alive and  _thriving_ . Despite everything that had happened to her baby girl since she’d left her in Hunan, Daisy had grown into an amazing woman, skilled, kickass and caring. Even if Nat might wish that caring nature didn’t send her running into danger so often. 

Now though, Nat smiled watching her daughter so engrossed in her hack. Daisy unashamedly loved hacking, and despite all training to be aware of her surroundings she was completely and utterly switched off to everything but the code on the screen and the keyboard under her fingers. Nat knew that if she called Daisy’s name just then the woman wouldn’t even twitch. She shook her head fondly and left Daisy to it, going downstairs to let her niece and nephew drag her into whatever they were doing. 

\-----------------

Daisy was clearly done or given up by the time supper rolled around, because she came right downstairs when Laura yelled that it was time to eat. Nat could tell from the edges of a smug look on her Pauchok’s face that it had been the former, and she itched to ask what she’d done once she’d gotten in. Or call Tony and see if he’d noticed yet. Clint raised his eyebrows in question at Daisy as soon as she arrived, but Daisy just let her lips twitch and didn’t answer, despite the pleading look Hawkeye sent her. Nat let her lips stretch into a small smile. Pranking with her Pauchok was  _fun_ ! 

“What are you up to?” Laura asked suspiciously from behind her. 

Nat smiled innocently “Nothing” she chorused, in perfect time with both Clint and Daisy.

Laura walked over to the table, hands on hips and a disbelieving expression on her face “What have you done?”

“Nothing here.” Nat amended.

Laura looked at her suspiciously, then nodded “Then I don’t want to know.” she said “Lila! Cooper! Hurry up!”

Nat quickly wiped the smug look off her face as the kids ran in, she’d been playing legos with them for most of the latter part of the afternoon before she came to help Laura (under strict instructions) with supper. She was well aware that neither kid would need any encouragement to start pulling their own pranks if they heard she was pulling them. And Nat didn’t especially want to be the target. Although if they asked nicely, she would probably help them prank Clint tomorrow. Purely because she had to maintain her position as the cool Auntie Nat of course. No other reason.

Supper was a fairly light meal, and even Laura didn’t tell them they weren’t eating enough. They were all still semi-full from lunch and even Daisy didn’t eat that much. Which was to say that she only are as much as a normal person ate after a long run. Laura looked deeply satisfied. It was a nice meal, quieter than lunch, but relaxed and friendly, hopefully winding down the kids excitement so they wouldn’t have to be wrestled into bed.

Unfortunately (although Nat couldn’t really bring herself to regret it) the effect was ruined when her phone went off half way through the meal. Nat pulled it out and accepted the videocall.

“ _ **What did you DO?**_ ” Tony howled before Nat could even register who was on the other end. It took all her self control not to instantly crack up laughing, especially as her Pauchok made a strangled noise from next to her and ducked out of sight under the table. Well, that thoroughly confirmed that Daisy had gotten in. 

“What do you mean Tony?” she asked, puzzlement dripping from her voice. She took a second to confirm the little light at the corner of the screen was blinking, meaning she was recording the call. Maria was going to _love_ this. So was Pepper. 

“ _You know what I mean!!!”_ Tony shouted “ _You said_ she _! You know who skyenet is and_ _ **you made her do this!**_ ”

“Do what?” Nat asked innocently, although she genuinely wanted to know the answer. 

“ _Do what! Do...every screen in the building reads ‘Merry Christmas from skyenet’_ ”

The strangled noises emerging from under the table became chocked howls of laughter, and Clint shoved his sleeve in his mouth, face red with suppressed laughter. Lila and Cooper (out of sight of the phone camera, she was careful) looked curious while Laura was shaking her head at them in resignation. Nat didn’t even bother controlling her laughter, and Tony gave a shriek of annoyance through the phone, his face a picture. 

“You were tempting fate saying even skyenet couldn’t hack your new system.” she said, voice still persistently innocent. 

“I think fate had a helping hand this time; I can hear you lot laughing from over here.” Pepper’s voice said from outside the shot “Please tell me you trust whoever you just pointed in the direction of our servers?” 

Nat abandoned the pretence of innocence as Daisy and Clint lost all control over their amusement and burst into howls of laughter. “She’s completely trustworthy” she promised, meeting her friends eyes so the CEO would know she had nothing to worry about.

“How long have you known who she is?” Pepper asked, while Tony kept spluttering. 

“A few months” Nat said, remembering her Pauchok’s embarrassed face as she told them. 

“I want her!” Tony said, finally working out what he wanted to say enough to overcome his sheer indignation. 

“She’s not for sale!” Nat said a little indignantly. 

“Everyone’s for sale if you offer them a high enough salary” Tony dismissed. “Who is she?”

Nat saw Daisy duck out from under the table, stopping laughing with what looked like a monumental effort of will. She offered her daughter the phone with a questioning quirk of her eyebrows, and Daisy nodded with a grin. Nat passed it over.

“I’m not for sale” Daisy said. 

For a split second there was pure silence, then “ _**You’re skyenet!** _ ” Tony and Pepper burst out together 

“Yeah, uh, sorry?” Daisy said, suddenly no longer looking quite so certain. 

“I knew I liked you,” Pepper said, shoulders shaking with laughter, then “but I am going to need you to sign a non-discloser agreement about anything you might have seen or learned while hacking in.”

“Fair enough.” Daisy said “Although I didn’t look at anything. Just wanted to see if I could do it.”

Nat let a few more giggles escape at the half guilty half proud tone of her daughters voice.

“Well you can definitely do it.” Pepper said, “Can I ask how to make our screens go back to normal?”

“It’ll go away by itself at midnight, it’s just a background, you can still use the computers.” Daisy said. “Although the other thing I did won’t go away at midnight.”

“Other thing?” Pepper asked in alarm. 

Daisy grinned, face full of mischief “Don’t worry,  _you’ll_ enjoy it. Tony...maybe a bit less. Speaking of which, is he alright?”

Nat glanced over her daughter’s shoulder at the question to see her teammate still staring at Daisy, mouth open and for possibly the first time in his life, lost for words. She should probably mark this day in the calender. Sadly, Daisy’s question seemed to have sparked some life back into him.

“You’re skyenet!! Nat’s daughter is skyenet!”

“Uh, yeah” Daisy repeated

“You made JARVIS sing whenever I brought someone round!” Tony said, accusingly

Nat could feel a smirk spreading across her face, even as she watched Daisy blush, she could see what was coming.

“I was 17” Daisy said in her defence. Clint got up to stick his face infront of the camera to finish it. 

“And drunk! She hacked you 17 and drunk.” he said, face and voice so covered in glee even Nat felt a little sorry for him. Not enough to stop laughing at her teammate, but enough that she might stop teasing him about it before next Christmas. Maybe. 

“Someone bet me a laptop! That I needed!” Daisy said defensively, if still guiltily. 

“How did you _do it?”_ Tony complained “The system was new!”

It took Nat a moment to realise her teammate was talking about the recent hack, not the one years ago, but Daisy was already talking “If it makes you feel better, it’s a really good system, it’s meshed really well with your old system and with JARVIS. I probably couldn’t have done it if I hadn’t done it before. And if I hadn’t had such a good look at JARVIS’s code yesterday.”

Outrage and then sudden suspicion crossed Tony’s face “Did you use the laptop I gave you to hack in?”

“Ummmmm” Daisy said, and Nat dodged away from the camera as she couldn’t contain her laughter anymore. Next to her, Clint had sunk to the floor clutching his sides. Tony had gone back to spluttering. 

“Its an amazing computer!” Daisy said, sounding thoroughly guilty now, but Nat was laughing too hard to come to her daughter’s aid. “The processing power and internet speed is like nothing I’ve ever seen before!”

“You used my laptop to...” Tony moaned. 

“I’ll fix the holes in the system for you?” Daisy offered

Tony huffed “You better.” then “How did you do it?”

Daisy said something in a long stream that even Nat (who knew she was no slouch at hacking herself) could only understand 20% of, and she saw Tony’s face light up. She quickly intervened before either of them could get going. 

“Not now Pauchok. Come and finish eating.” she said, swiping the phone before either Daisy or Tony could protest. 

“Nice talking to you Tony, Pepper” she said, with only a slight smirk on her face, and hung up after Pepper echoed her farewell, ignoring Tony’s protest. She made sure the record of the call was saved before she tucked it back into her pocket. 

“Well, that solves the problem of if I ever need to bribe Maria. Or blackmail Tony” she said dryly. 

Laura sighed “You’re all going to get arrested.” she moaned.

“No we won’t” Clint said smugly “We’ve broken way bigger laws than that without getting into trouble.”

Laura full on groaned. “You two better take after me” she said to her kids. Nat looked over the grinning faces of her niece and nephew and had the sinking feeling that Laura was going to be disappointed. They were going to get into sooooo much trouble in their teens.

\------------

After supper they all (Laura refused to sit and watch) worked together to clean up all the dishes from both the mid-day and evening meal, then, as was traditional, they built a massive blanket fort in the living room, flipping the sofa on it’s side and arranging the sofa cushions on the floor as mattresses, then stretching armfuls of blankets over the top to make an indoor fort. The tradition had started when Cooper was three, because they’d needed something to entice him to go to sleep after exciting days, or at least, to stay put quietly until exhaustion took him. Lila had joined him for the first time last year and had since had ‘den-nights’ 4 times on various days, and took enthusiastic part in the building of the den. When it was done Clint sent Cooper upstairs to shower and change, while Nat read Lila another chapter of Heidi, putting on voices for the different characters. From the corner of her eye she could see an odd look on her Pauchok’s face as she relaxed (on the floor, the sofa’s had been repurposed) next to Laura. A look of disappointment was quickly masked on Daisy’s face when she finished the chapter and closed the book, covered by Lila’s pleading for another chapter. 

Nat, who knew from experience (she was a pushover sometimes when it came to Lila and Cooper, and she knew it) that another chapter would become another two, which would become the rest of the book (it had happened no less that 5 times), firmly refused, and balanced it by picking Lila up and cuddling her as she carried the four year old upstairs to wash and change in the now empty bathroom. Twenty minutes later, she brought a distinctly damper girl back downstairs, to find her daughter and nephew both hunched over Coopers (well, it had once been Laura’s, but she’d had it for years and then gotten a new one, so she’d given it to Cooper and Lila, but Lila never used it, so it was pretty much Coops) laptop. Cooper looked up in disappointment when she entered, clearly seeing the rapid approach of bedtime.

“Daisy’s installing funny screen things” Cooper said. 

Nat raised a questioning eyebrow at Daisy.

“I set his computer up to make his screen flip when he pressed ‘F’, and spin when ‘S’ is pressed. Then I set it up to blank and unblank with ‘B’, change colours with ‘C’, split into pieces and reform in different patterns with ‘P’, and make all the desktop files bounce around the screen with ‘D’”

“I can’t wait to show Brian! He’s been bragging about his computer for ages!” Cooper said gleefully

“It’s not a competition Coop” Laura said, coming back into the room. 

“Yes it is” Clint and Daisy said at once, then wilted under Laura’s glare. Nat smirked at their sheepish expressions, and put Lila down, giving her one last cuddle before firmly detaching the 4 year old despite the fact that she ‘wasn’t tired’ and ‘wasn’t going to fall asleep’. 

Ten minutes later they had (finally) managed to get both kids settled in the den, and they all trooped out, abandoning the living room to the kids for the night. Laura and Clint headed for the kitchen but Daisy went straight for the stairs.

“Where are you going?” she asked her Pauchok. 

Daisy shrugged casually “Upstairs, I’ll come back down in a while” and vanished.

Nat blinked at her back for a moment in surprise. What was that about?

“Nat? You want eggnog?” Clint asked, and she decided to give Daisy a couple of minutes before she went and investigated. She followed Clint into the kitchen and they started making the eggnog together. It was one of the few things both she and Clint could cook (and actually enjoy consuming rather than just attain the low bar of not poisoning themselves) and Laura allowed them to cook in her kitchen. They had a batch made up in five minutes, and poured it into four mugs, at which point Nat decided she’d given her Pauchok a few minutes and was going up to investigate. 

She didn’t make a lot of noise on the stairs, but she wasn’t exactly quiet either, the wooden floorboards creaking under her steps as she headed for the guest room Daisy had been given. She knocked gently with the hand not holding mug handles and opened the door. Daisy was sitting at the desk by the window, staring blankly down.

“Pauchok?” she asked, hearing the tinge of concern in her voice. 

Daisy jumped visibly, and twisted in her chair to look, startled, at the door.

“I didn’t mean to startle you.” Nat apologised, crossing the room and setting both mugs of eggnog down on the side of the desk. She looked with interest at the things spread out on the desk. Two sheets of blank lined paper. A pen. A cigarette lighter. “Are you alright Pauchok?”

“I, yeah, I’m fine.” Daisy said, but her expression still looked so lost, and her eyes dropped back the the items on the desk and didn’t rise again. Nat changed tac. 

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing” Daisy said, shrugging, but her eyes didn’t lift from the blank paper in front of her. Nat held her tongue, waiting her daughter out. Finally, Daisy sighed “It’s, it’s stupid, it’s my tradition.”

“Hmmm?” Nat prompted

Daisy reached forward to pick up the pen, uncapping it and recapping it without seeming to really notice what her hands were doing. “I’ve done this every year since I was 3, since before I could even write it myself. Every single year. But there’s no point now, and I don’t know why I’m upset about it.”

Nat looked at the writing things on the desk and thought she might know what Daisy had been about to do with them. She grabbed the other chair from the corner and sat down. She had a feeling she wanted to be comfortable for this conversation.

“Why is there no point Pauchok?” she asked, even though she was pretty sure she knew the answer. 

Daisy’s eyes finally lifted from the table, looking lost “I’ve already found my parents.” she whispered. “So why am I upset about this?”

“Because it’s been a constant in your life, and because everything else has changed.” Nat said softly “Its ok to hold onto things.” 

“But I have something better now” Daisy said. 

Nat shifted in her seat, then she said softly “I still slept with handcuffs for two years after joining Shield.”

“Huh?” Daisy said, finally shifting her entire attention from the desk. 

“It’s not the same” Nat said “But I used to equate handcuffs with safety. They always chained our wrists to the bed in the red-room, so I did it when I was safe at KGB bases. For me, safety meant being handcuffed to the bed. For you, getting close to your parents meant writing letters. And maybe sleeping without handcuffs is better, and getting to meet and know your parents is better, but it takes time Pauchok, and that’s ok.”

“How did you stop?” Daisy asked “How did you start feeling safe?”

“It took time,” Nat said, looking back on those early years at Shield. “a lot of time, Clint helped. I slowly realised that Shield wasn’t going to turn on me, that they weren’t like the red-room.” 

“But how did you _know_?”

“Know what Pauchok?”

“That Shield wasn’t going to change?”

Nat paused a moment “We’re not talking about the Shield anymore are we?”

For long moments Daisy didn’t respond, then she silently shook her head. “This feels like home.” she whispered “And that never ends well.” then she winced “I said that to my father, before he told me he was my father.” she remembered.

The pain in her daughters voice stabbed at Nat, and for a moment she wished Jia Ying wasn’t dead so she could hunt him down and kill him. Without thinking she got up and pulled Daisy out of her seat, wrapping her arms around her daughter and squeezing tightly.

“We are your home now Pauchok, and we’re not going anywhere.”

“I know.” Daisy said “Except, sometimes I don’t.”

“It takes time” Nat repeated “It’s ok.”

“I know” Daisy repeated.

“You want to write your letters?” Nat asked

Daisy pulled back to look incredulously at her “My father’s dead, my step-mom’s had her memory wiped and you’re right in front of me.”

“So?” Nat asked “Do you want to?”

Daisy blinked, then thought about it, then finally “Not really.”

“Ok” Nat said. “You want to go back downstairs”

“Not really” 

“Lets sit down then, may as well be comfortable” she said. Daisy moved to sit at the desk again, but she tugged her Pauchok towards the bed. Cuddles were mandatory after that. For Daisy’s sake of course. Her daughter didn’t protest as she guided her to lean against the headboard with her, legs sprawled across the bed. 

“So, what did you write in the letters?” she asked Daisy, partly to coax her daughter out of the ball of silence she’d retreated into and partly because she really wanted to know. 

“Stuff about my year mostly” Daisy said “I don’t really remember that well. I’d burn them when I finished.”

“Why burn them?”

“The kid at the orphanage who got me started doing it would burn his. His parents were dead, but I didn’t know what had happened to mine, and I liked to think that the wind would carry the ashes to wherever my parents were, and maybe the wind would carry the ashes of something they wrote back.”

“Oh” Nat said, having no idea how to respond to that. The thought of her Pauchok writing to her and burning it, year after year, because it was the closest she could get to family tore at her heart. 

“Don’t worry, I know you’re not the kind of person to do something stupidly sentimental like that.” Daisy said, mistaking the meaning of her silence.

“It’s not stupid” Nat chided.

“Did you do stuff like that then?” Daisy asked curiously. 

“No” Nat said, looking back “I was never brave enough.”

“Brave enough?” her Pauchok said, clearly confused. 

Nat tried to work out how to explain “Before shield, before Clint, you were the only person I could remember truly loving, and leaving you in Hunan, it was like leaving a part of myself. I wasn’t nearly brave enough to let myself dwell on it, because I knew it would either destroy me or I’d go and get you. Then with Shield, when I heard rumours about a mission gone FUBAR in Hunan, when I went and I found the village and I thought you were dead.... I didn’t nearly have the courage to face that pain. To face what I’d d...” Nat cut herself short, cursing herself for saying too much, but it was too late.

“What do you mean what you did?” Daisy asked.

Nat winced, desperately not wanting to answer that question.

“Mama?” Daisy asked, and the sound of the concern in her Pauchok’s voice (her living, breathing Pauchok when the memory of Hunan was so close) unravelled her a little. 

“I thought it was my fault.” she admitted, her voice heavy “That some enemy of mine had tracked me to Hunan, had worked out who you were and taken revenge on me. That you were dead because of my crimes.”

Daisy sucked in a sharp, horrified breath “It wasn’t your fault! It was Hydra!”

“I know.” Nat reassured her “I just didn’t then.”

Daisy didn’t reply, she just snuggled closer to her, offering what comfort she could. Nat reached a hand up to stroke Daisy’s hair. “It feels a bit like a dream sometimes” she admitted “this second chance. Like I might wake up and it’ll all be gone.”

“It won’t” Daisy said “I promise. This is our second chance, we’re not letting anything take it away.” and Nat wasn’t quite sure who was comforting who. 

“Anyone who tries will have to fight your mom and I” she promised. 

“And me! I can handle myself! And dad, he’d look all hurt if we left him out.” Daisy added. 

“And you and your dad” Nat conceded, laughing a little at the thought of her old handler’s wounded puppy face. 

“Do you ever wish you could go back and change things?” Daisy asked suddenly. 

“Back in time?” Nat asked, to buy herself time. 

“Yeah”

Nat swallowed, her throat suddenly tight “Looking back does no good.” she said “but...” she cut herself off.

“But?” Daisy asked, and Nat found she was answering. 

“But I never got to hear your first words,” she whispered “I never got to hold your hands when you learned to walk, or throw you a birthday party or push you on the swings. I didn’t get to stick your pictures on the fridge and frame your school photos. I didn’t get to make you a packed lunch for your first day of school or buy you ice-cream afterwards. I didn’t get to take you to the park or read you bedtime stories or tuck you in. I didn’t get to give you your first computer or send you to fancy coding classes to support your illegal hacking. I didn’t get to watch you grow up. I didn’t get to give you a home you could always rely on. I didn’t get to make you feel loved.” There are tears burning in her eyes but she refuses to let them fall, to give in to the hollow ache of loss from all those missing years. 

“You make me feel loved now” Daisy whispered. “And we can still go to the park and mess around on the swings and stuff, even if its not the same.”

“Would you like that?”

“Maybe.” Daisy said, chuckling “We can try and flip the swing over the bar. I never quite managed it as a kid.”

“Then again, I didn’t get to go grey before you hit high-school either.” Nat said, deadpan, and they both cracked up laughing. 

“I wasn’t _that_ bad as a kid” Daisy tried to protest through her giggles. 

“Why don’t I believe that?” Nat laughed, shaking her head, setting Daisy off laughing again. 

“You know.” Daisy said, when they’d both calmed down a bit “There’s probably still a folder full of my old drawings and photos and stuff at St Agnes. They still hadn’t really switched to computers when I ran off, and they never really throw things out. We could break in and steal it.”

Nat smiled at the thought. She only had one photo of Daisy before she’d found her again. “We could drop by on the way back to the Playground”

“Sounds good” Daisy said “We could make a couple of copies and give dad one for his scrapbook. And put another in the photo album mom and dad gave me. Then my youngest photo won’t be from the BUS.”

“There are photos of you from the BUS?” Nat asked.

“Yeah, I think dad was scrap-booking even then, but he’ll never admit it.”

“Can I see?” Nat asked. 

“Sure” Daisy said, climbing off the bed to retrieve the photo album from the pile of presents and then scrambling back into bed, squirming to find her perfect warm spot again. Nat waited until she was done before flipping open the album, finding a slightly younger looking Daisy laughing with FitzSimmons in what looked like a mini-lab. A mess on the worktop showed that an experiment had clearly failed. The next photo showed Daisy asleep on a circular couch, a laptop still open next to her. The next page contained a collage of photos that had to be from some sort of prank war, the results of pranks against all of them (including a dark haired man Nat assumed must be Ward) captured in photographic form (or possibly extracted from video surveillance). 

Daisy started explaining the story behind each photo as they went through, explaining about FitzSimmons starting a prank war because she’d never been to the academy and gone through the traditional hazing, and about May continuing it. About them all going out for pizza after a particularly difficult mission and dozens of other stories. There was a photo of Daisy firing rubber bands around from a hospital bed, a look of numb boredom on her face, that Nat wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry at. There was a photo of Coulson’s mournful face looking over a beaten up Lola that Nat did laugh at, and dozens of photos of both the B US and the Playground of Daisy and various members of the team. Photos from the Christmas spent at the Playground, and of rewiring and making the base into an actual base. Photo after photo of Daisy’s shield family, until suddenly she turned a page and her own face looked back at her, from the first meal she’d had at the Playground, all the Playground team sitting around a table talking. It had clearly been extracted from the security feed, but it was a good photo, all of them digging into dessert and talking, but even in the photo you could tell Nat was discretely watching Daisy from the corner of her eye. Various photos after that followed, including a copy of the one they’d added to Coulson’s scrapbook. 

It wasn’t just a photo album Nat realised. It was a  _family_ photo album. Daisy must have realised the same because her fingers were desperately gentle as she turned the pages, smiling at each picture even though the photos were all from the last few months now and the memories were recent. The last page held only a single photo, the one they took the night they all went ice-skating in the town near the Playground. 

They’d gotten one of the rink staff to take the photo, and all crowded into it. May, Coulson, Fitz, Simmons, Bobbi, Mack, Hunter, Elena, Lincoln, Ben, Jeni, Nat and Daisy. Everyone who could safely leave the base and come. They were all crowded together, balancing precariously on skates with their arms around each other, scarves and coats and all, and massive grins across all their faces. A photo of almost every member of Daisy’s family, gathered together.

Nat looked down at Daisy, snuggled into her side, and found her daughter’s gaze transfixed on the photo, a smile softer and wider than Nat had ever seen on her face. One hand reached up to touch the silver necklace around her throat.  _Always_ . 

Nat rested her head on Daisy’s and echoed the thought allowed. “We’ll always be your family Daisy.  _Always_ .”

And just then, Natasha didn’t think she  had ever  be en more grateful in her life. Despite everything they’d been through, they were here, at the end of Christmas with their adopted family, both with teams at different bases who were their family too. Family who’d given them second chances, and who’d fought for and with them. And here, with her Pauchok, living and breathing and thriving, Nat had never been more grateful for their second chance and their fought for family. 

\------------------

*2 weeks later in New York*

_Rock a bye baby here in my arms_

“JARVIS **switch it off** _ **!**_ ”

_ Though the wind blows it means you no harm _

“ _ **JARVIS**_ ”

_ Sleep little baby close to my chest _

“I apologise Sir, you have been in the lab for over 12 hours without rest, my protocols insist...” 

“IGNORE THEM!”

_ Angels watch over you as you rest _

“AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHH”

_Rock a bye baby Mama loves you_

“Sir, if I may, my protocols allow me to stop as soon as you leave the lab and go to bed.”

_Puppy dogs bark and kittens they mew_

“I’m not finished! Where are my earplugs?”

_Close your eyes baby don’t you weep_

“Sir, my protocols do not allow me to...”

_Mama will hold you now as you sleep_

“ _ **DAISY!!!!!**_ ”

*10 minutes later several floors up*

“Miss Potts, no threats will be needed tonight either, Sir is heading up to get some food and rest.”

"Wonderful, that makes a new record for how long a responsible sleep pattern has lasted. Remind me to send congratulations."

"To Sir?"

"To Daisy"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe it's over already!!! I've enjoyed writing this so much! Bother rl demanding actual time and effort.... I hope everyone has enjoyed reading this as much as I've enjoyed writing it though!


End file.
